The last of what has been a really excellent series, this time from Peg O’Connor.
My heart simultaneously soars and sinks when a female undergraduate tells me that she is considering pursuing a Ph.D. in philosophy. First, I think, “You will be a great philosopher and make some important contributions to philosophy and someday I will get to be your colleague. Go for it!” My thoughts careening on a parallel track are, “Graduate school in philosophy can be treacherous and lecherous. And then if you make it through, the job market is its own special nightmare. Run away!” In that moment I feel trapped in the classic double bind of damned if I do and damned if I don’t, which many feminists would identify as the hallmark of structural sexism. I resent that trap. Bitterly.
Feminist Philosophers 
I thought all of the posts in this NYTimes series were wonderful. Dr. O’ Connor’s last lines got me thinking. She concludes, “nothing will really change unless and until more of our male colleagues begin to use their male privilege in very different ways. The burden clearly rests with them, and I hope that they assume the responsibility.”
Sounds great. But how might this come about? Here’s one potential obstacle to male philosophers taking up this responsibility. What about the ones who are already sure they are not sexist? The male philosophers I work with do not voice, in my presence (but I don’t think to anyone), worries about losing their privilege if more women are in philosophy. They think they are on the side of this. But, as far as I can tell, this means, instead, it can be very tricky to get them to acknowledge any sexism on their parts. This is despite how obvious it is to outsiders- even men from different fields (ones with more women and thus more interaction and chances to improve one’s outlook)– that men in philosophy treat the women in the philosophy very differently than they treat the other men.
I’ve gotten annoyed enough by double standards that I have said things like “Would you say that to (name a male colleague), or “If you are asking me to do (whatever), would you ask the same of (a male colleague)?”. These tactics have not worked for me. I’m convinced these colleagues will never see, let alone admit to, their sexism. They are against sexism after all!
So what would be a way for them to see it? It seems clear that something we can count up helps, as asking the question “How many women are in the Department?” has helped. “How much are the women in your Department speaking in meetings?” would be nice to add to that. “Do the women in the Department take the lead on various issues?” and “Can the women in your Department speak their minds?” would be nice for people to consider.
But would even this be enough? What if male philosophers start asking themselves questions like these. “Do you collaborate with one of your female colleagues, co-authoring or working together in some other way that displays trust?” (If not, why not?) “How often do you admit you are wrong to a female colleague?” (Why would this be?) And what would get to the bottom of it, as far as I can see, might be this: “Can you count, among your very best friends, some women in philosophy?”
I don’t think that the goal of a more equal and just philosophical community is going to be achieved by appealing to “privilege”, mostly because I think that the word, and the associated concept, is devoid of meaningful content. On a purely emotionally level, I find it quite irritating to hear claims that I am privileged when they are issued (as they invariably are) from persons (men and women) who have been far more fortunate than I in most respects. I rarely hear complaints about privilege from young academics from blue-collar families; or African-Americans born in poor urban centers; and so on. They come from a very specific demographic, which I will decline to identify because whenever I do so it causes shrieking. That won’t do any of us any good. But the idea that you can tell who has been the product of good fortune, and who has not, on the basis of gender is ridiculous.
I think the way to approach the real problem of lack of female representation in philosophy is through straightforward, rational argument and appeal to facts. Let’s just show, through research, that women suffer from implicit bias and other forms of discrimination. That should not be hard to do if it is indeed the case, and I believe that it is. Let’s then argue that such discrimination is morally arbitrary, and thus should not be allowed to affect hiring, tenure decisions, and so on. This is all well-traveled territory in moral philosophy and I think uncontroversial, even among those who pass for reactionaries in our community.
We have a huge advantage compared to other groups that suffer discrimination in that we are all pretty progressive to begin with, highly susceptible to persuasion via logical argument, careful not to let biases creep into our judgment, and so on. Obviously we are not perfect in this regard. But I am confident that with a smart, substantive effort, progress can be made.
Hi LogicFan,
I feel a little out of my depth on this subject, but I think it makes perfectly good sense to speak of “male privilege” even if there are other respects (than gender) in which the male in question is less privileged. I mean, a person can be privileged in respect of X, disadvantaged in respect of Y, and so on.
I can see how it might be irritating, but it’s still perfectly… logical.
“I rarely hear complaints about privilege from young academics from blue-collar families”
How do you know, necessarily? If you looked at my CV, all you’d see are “fancy schools.” I also went to a prep school where everyone else seemed to own a mansion (no sleepovers at my house). My working-class parents worked second shifts as janitors and took on substantial debt to send me to these schools. Does the hurtful class privilege of many clueless colleagues keep me from speaking up loudly about male privilege (a helpful shorthand for ONE collection of advantages)? Hell no.
“On a purely emotionally level, I find it quite irritating to hear claims that I am privileged when they are issued (as they invariably are) from persons (men and women) who have been far more fortunate than I in most respects.”
I find it emotionally irritating when people make assumptions about my background as compared to theirs. It might be helpful to think about claims about privilege as claims about societal structures, not claims meant to silence you or instruct you about your own life. Indeed, as my story above illustrates, it is very annoying when someone sees I’ve graduated from and dismisses me as some rich woman who clearly has no clue about blue-collar people. (This is not to deny that, by virtue of education, I and people like me have acquired some class privilege.)
“We have a huge advantage compared to other groups that suffer discrimination in that we are all pretty progressive to begin with, highly susceptible to persuasion via logical argument, careful not to let biases creep into our judgment, and so on.”
Who are these other groups who aren’t susceptible to persuasion via rational argument? Are philosophers really better than others at reasoning about very messy topics? And I think we ought to keep in mind that trying to be careful not to let biases creep into our judgment is no guarantee that biases won’t creep in. In fact, believing that you’re good at taking biases into account may lead to even more biased decision-making.
That should read, “sees I’ve graduated from (Prestigious University X)”
CM: “I find it emotionally irritating when people make assumptions about my background as compared to theirs.”
I could not agree more; this is precisely my point. It’s impossible to know that someone is privileged, or not, without know him or her very, very well. A social relationship might not be enough. A resume isn’t. Gender isn’t even close. In your case, you are wrongly thought to be the product of privilege. And just because we can see how someone might make that mistake does not change the fact that they are wrong: You are not, in fact, the product of privilege. Yours is an excellent example of why I object to the term and the concept.
“Who are these other groups who aren’t susceptible to persuasion via rational argument?” I am thinking here (for example) of religious organizations; most political groups; sports leagues. I cannot imagine that philosophers are not going to be easier to convince of the injustice of gender inequality than, say, the NRA.
“Are philosophers really better than others at reasoning about very messy topics?” Yes, I believe so.
“The product of privilege”? I must not have made my point very well. I absolutely am and have been the beneficiary of white privilege, some class privilege (when I am assumed to have come from an upper-class background), etc.
Again, it may not be helpful to think of privilege as all-or-nothing, homogeneous kind of thing. As I suggested in my previous post, it can function as a kind of shorthand. For example, I benefit from white privilege when my resume is read more carefully because of my “white” name, from class privilege when it’s looked at more closely because of that “fancy” university, etc.
“I find it emotionally irritating when people make assumptions about my background as compared to theirs.”
And, here, I was referring to the assumptions you appear to have made about people who think “privilege” is a useful concept. Your assumptions are at the personal level, about the particular life histories of particular people. In contrast, talk of “privilege” is at the social and institutional level. (I don’t doubt, by the way, that people have made hurtful assumptions about you as an individual. Anyone can be an asshole.)
“It’s impossible to know that someone is privileged, or not, without know him or her very, very well.”
No, it’s impossible to know ALL of the privileges someone has without knowing them well. Privilege is often (if not always) benefits conferred upon someone by social structures. So, you can tell by looking at me that I have white privilege and not male privilege, but you can’t be sure what my class background is.
I think John Scalzi has one of the clearest explanations of why acknowledging privilege does NOT erase the difficulties that individuals might have.
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-the-lowest-difficulty-setting-there-is/
“Okay: In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is.
This means that the default behaviors for almost all the non-player characters in the game are easier on you than they would be otherwise. The default barriers for completions of quests are lower. Your leveling-up thresholds come more quickly. You automatically gain entry to some parts of the map that others have to work for. The game is easier to play, automatically, and when you need help, by default it’s easier to get.”
As long as we’re considering Scalzi’s video game analogy, it seems to me that “difficulty setting” is probably not the way to characterize these things. Life and video games have at least this in common in a general sense: a characteristic may be advantageous in a certain way, or with regard to a particular environment or a particular objective, but the very same characteristic may be less advantageous, neutral or disadvantageous in other ways or for other things. Moreover, because at a given point a particular character will possess multiple traits that arguably confer advantages and disadvantages in different respects, it can be difficult or impossible to know whether, even with regard to a particular outcome or situation (much less in a general way, as is wont to be the case with difficulty settings), a character is at a net disadvantage, or whether they are relatively advantaged or disadvantaged with respect to another individual, or why.
I have a rule-of-thumb, which has served me well, and it is to be wary when persons resort to ad hominem attack, or emphatic reports of their own emotional reactions to avoid rigorous engagement on disputed issues.
Logicfan, you mention being “a product of good fortune” when discussing the idea of privilege. But privilege is not about *mere* good or bad fortune and I have never seen any proponent of the usefulness of the concept of privilege suggest that we can tell who has good/bad fortune by knowing one’s gender (or race, sexuality, ableness, etc.)
There are plenty of bad things (and good things) that happen to people that are simply matters of the luck of the draw. For instance, I lost a baby to preterm labor last year. It was beyond question the worst thing that has ever happened to me and given the rarity of this outcome and the circumstances which seem to have caused it, I count myself rather unfortunate when it comes to pregnancy outcomes. Yet this is not a case of me being less privileged than those those who are fortunate enough to have uncomplicated full-term pregnancies which led to the delivery of healthy infants. Why not? Because privilege is about structural inequality and my reproductive misfortune was not. (At least, there is no obvious sense in which my pregnancy outcome was related to oppression or inequality; it was simply the biological luck of the draw.) McIntosh, for example, characterizes privilege as unearned advantage or conferred dominance. Mere differences in fortune–the biological luck of the draw–are not conferred by anyone (unless one wants to invoke a higher being here, which I do not) and it doesn’t make sense to think of them as earned or unearned.
This is why if you take a look at lists of gender privilege you won’t see “biological luck” type items. Being able to see rather than being blind, having been born with the equipment to be able to carry a pregnancy rather than not, being sexually attracted to people of the other sex (if this is in fact biological), etc. are not privileges. How a social structure deals with the “luck” involved in being a person with or without these traits is where privilege comes into things.
In other words, fortunate is a much larger category than privilege. Not all ways of being fortunate (unfortunate) are ways of being privileged (unprivileged).
The supposed difficulties of 3rd personal ascription of privilege are not directly relevant to Dr. O’Connor’s conclusion. First personal ascription will do just fine. Some men have a significant amount of privilege that derives from their position as men in various social structures. These men have special responsibilities.
I think of these responsibilities as derived from the negative duty to not accept ill-gotten gains without also working to undermine the structures that create these gains.
Jeremy, would you say that the degree of special responsibility bears some relation to the portion of the advantages one such man enjoys which is attributable solely to his sex? It seems to me no easy proposition to quantify that portion, even so far as to say whether it is significant in a given case (10% of a person’s aggregate advantage? 1%?).
anon: you have my deep sympathies for your loss.
” it seems to me that “difficulty setting” is probably not the way to characterize these things. Life and video games have at least this in common in a general sense: a characteristic may be advantageous in a certain way, or with regard to a particular environment or a particular objective, but the very same characteristic may be less advantageous, neutral or disadvantageous in other ways or for other things. ”
I take it you (a) don’t play video games, and, (b) didn’t read the essay. The idea is that IN ADDITION TO characteristics that can be beneficial in some setting or another, there is a difficulty setting. It might not *seem* to you that there is, but there are a lot of people trying to point out that there is.
Here are some facts compiled that provide a little support to Scalzi’s claim: http://www.jimchines.com/2012/05/facts-are-cool/
Here is another way to try to characterize privilege regarding gender: http://amptoons.com/blog/the-male-privilege-checklist/ and Peggy McIntosh’s original race version: http://people.westminstercollege.edu/faculty/jsibbett/readings/White_Privilege.pdf
From the McIntosh piece:
“I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was ‘meant’ to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks.”
And on why it’s hard:
“For me white privilege has turned out to be an elusive and fugitive subject. The pressure to avoid it is great, for in
facing it I must give up the myth of meritocracy. If these things are true, this is not such a free country; one’s life is not what one makes it; many doors open for certain people through no virtues of their own.”
The reason I disagree with LogicFan that we have to get past the talk of privilege, is that I can’t see how we’re going to change the structures that make life (relatively) easier for cis white heterosexual men and (relatively) harder for everyone else. If we really want a meritocracy, we need to make sure that it’s merit that counts, not that one seems appropriately “normal” (straight, white cis male).
And given how just about every thread this week has been derailed into justifying some background material for feminist discussions (this week? never mind) maybe it would be helpful to post the Feminism 101 blog: http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/purpose/
We might be getting far afield here, but I’m not sure talk of special responsibilities is really the major contribution of talk of privilege. And, like Nemo says at #14, it’s not clear how much a man’s privilege is attributable solely to his sex.
I’ve found appeals to privilege helpful for two main reasons (though I’m sure other folks have others):
a. It helps us account for the ways social systems include or marginalize people, by default, on the basis of social categories. It’s not about what a man does, what a white person does, or what a black person does or does not do. It’s about default expectations that are usually not the responsibility of the individuals affected. It instructs not individuals people about their special responsibilities, but everyone about the ways social systems work and what everyone needs to work to change.
b. It helps us account for *intersectionality*, or the ways that social categories interrelate within a system of oppression. Any time we talk about male privilege, we should always have in mind the fact that identities one has in addition to being a male (e.g., straight, gay, black, white, working-class, etc.) will change how privilege affects people.
When we’re talking about philosophy, specifically, gender is important, but so are race, class, sexual orientation, and more controversially (though I think it’s just as true), pedigree and whether the philosophical work one is doing is central to contemporary analytic philosophy or marginal to that field. A full understanding of privilege, which is a little beyond the scope of what the NYT writers were getting at in these short public articles, will incorporate all of these things.
Angie Hobbs (Sheffield University) on BBC Radio 3: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b039p15g
Nemo: Thanks for the question. The primary point I was trying to make was that the conversation needn’t get arrested by the supposed epistemic difficulties of knowing how much privilege another person has. I agree with you that quantifying the percentage of one’s aggregate advantage due to particular aspects of one’s social identity (like one’s being a man) is not easy. But it seems that the conversation that Dr. O’Connor began at the end of her article also needn’t get hung up by these difficulties. If a man has certain privileges relating to social dynamics in his philosophy department which, say, allow him to confront sexist or merely oblivious colleagues in a more effective way (for instance, in a way that might lead to greater uptake), then he has a pro tanto obligation to speak up to his colleagues in certain situations. Maybe our disagreement is based on my strong conviction that there is, in fact, significant male privilege in the discipline, which conviction (in turn) leads me not to worry about having to quantify it.
Matt: Thanks for these remarks about privilege, and for pressing me wrt the intersectionality of social identities and the privilege accrued therefrom. I agree with you (and with Nemo, who alludes to some of these points) about (a) and (b)–and I don’t see why I (or Dr. O’Connor) would need to dispute these claims. Even if M’s male privilege differs from N’s male privilege because of other identities and social roles that they have or play, it still makes sense to speak of the privilege that each has deriving from their position as men in various social structures. What am I missing here? Do you think the concept of male privilege, say, is incoherent? I take it that you don’t, since you use in in (b). If your point is that talk of special obligations is not the MAJOR contribution of talk of privilege, then I suppose I don’t need to disagree with that to make my point. (However I do think that talk of privilege should have direct practical–and not merely theoretical or “accounting”–upshot, say in the form of negative duties of the sort I described.)
Matt also raises the crucial point that we should attend to other aspects of privilege. I’m especially concerned with racial privilege, given how few philosophers are black or latina/-o. (All estimates I’ve seen show that Black, Latina/-o, and Asian philosophers make up about 5% of the discipline, or less than one-fifth of their combined portion of the U.S. population.) So I second the hope that those who are engaged in campaigns about gender in philosophy also have an eye to members of other marginalized social groups.
CM said that “it may not be helpful to think of privilege as all-or-nothing, homogeneous kind of thing. As I suggested in my previous post, it can function as a kind of shorthand. For example, I benefit from white privilege when my resume is read more carefully because of my “white” name, from class privilege when it’s looked at more closely because of that “fancy” university, etc.”
Under this definition I have no objection to the concept. If there are biases which even unconsciously skew job selection (for example) away from a meritocratic basis then we have a moral duty to discover and correct them.
I am not a straight white man myself, but I just do not think it’s true that if you line up a straight white man and a straight white woman in front of me and tell me nothing more about them then I have any grounds to believe that the man has benefitted over the woman by structural inequalities. Further information (e.g. he was raised in the USA and her in a former Soviet republic) might be sufficient to establish this, but gender tells me nothing.
So I think that our cause might be aided by a slight shift in rhetoric. I think “privilege” is unhelpful for the reason I mentioned above–when everyone who complains about my privilege, often loudly and sharply–is in fact more privileged than I, then it is hard to take those claims seriously. It naturally prejudices one, right or wrong, against them. I think we are better served, and will be more broadly persuasive, if we argue the point on the simple grounds of justice. It’s simply unjust that the resume of a great female philosopher will be passed over in favor of her merely good male counterpart owing to implicit bias. I do not think there is much desire within the philosophy community to maintain a patriarchy of undeserved advantage. But I do think that, owing to some of the language, concepts, and arguments used (e.g. arguments about privilege), which are bad, there is an insufficient understanding of the reality of problem.
Alison Gopnik, in her Wall Street Journal column yesterday titled “Is it possible to reason about having a child?,” discusses a forthcoming paper by L.A. Paul in the journal Res Philosophica. The unsuspecting reader will assume that L.A. Paul is a man.
Gopnik gives no clue about Paul’s gender until the closing paragraph: “L.A. Paul, by the way, is, like me, both a philosopher and a mother—a combination that’s still surprisingly rare. There are more and more of us, though, so maybe the 2067 Encyclopedia of Philosophy will have more to say on the subject of children. Or maybe even philosopher-mothers will decide it’s easier to stick to thinking about angels.”
A relatively new bi-weekly columnist to WSJ (I’ve been a fan of her writing, especially her book, “The Philosophical Baby”), Gopnik’s readership numbers could be in the hundreds of thousands. That’s good news for showing a big general audience that, surprise!, there are women philosophers too.
LogicFan, on the one hand, you say that everyone who complains about your privilege is in fact more privileged than you. On the other hand, you say it’s not really possible to “read” privilege from someone.
It sucks that people are assholes to you (I’m inferring that these people are addressing or criticizing you personally and directly, which is just shitty and not, as I think many commenters have noted, some kind of feminist strategy. But you don’t really mention whether these accusers are personally confronting you). But you seem to be doing quite a bit of assuming yourself – and about specific individuals. Talk of privilege, again, is probably not best understood at the individual level.
I have a suspicion that jackasses will be jackasses no matter which words or concepts feminists use. “Privilege” has been a particularly useful one, and it’s difficult to see how feminists could or would stop using it.
RG, thanks so much for the reference/info.
CM and LF, you all have done an amazing job of keeping fairly civil. But I am wondering if now would be a good time to stop.
Let me just clear this up, because I can see how what I said could seem like a contradiction. I should have been clearer.
Take the class of persons who have made claims about me being privileged. Then take the subclass containing the persons about whom I have sufficient information to make reasonable judgments about their background. All the persons in that subclass have been more privileged than I.
My favorite example, whom despite this ridiculousness I adore dearly, is a female friend in possession of various trusts worth in excess of $100 million. It is not unreasonable to say, I think, that she has enjoyed much more privilege than I.
LogicFan, my above comment was held in moderation for a while. I’m not sure you understand what is being referred to by “Privilege.” Your last comment seems to confirm that.
It doesn’t mean your life is automatically easier than others. It means that there are obstacles that others have to deal with that not only you don’t have to deal with–you don’t even have to think about them. I highly recommend that you check some of the links above so that you know what is being referred to when we talk about privilege.
Even with your friend–qua philosophers you have privileges that she doesn’t.