L writes:
I am currently teaching an upper-level seminar on the philosophy of race and gender; I have 18 students, 8 of which are male and 15 of which are white. Several students have expressed a concern that so many of our readings on race are written by non-whites, that none of our gender readings are written by men. To them, this indicates that some of the readings we have looked at are unfairly biased against men and whites. While I am doing my best to address this concern through more appropriate measures, it seems that what the students want to see is white academic philosophers working on race, and male academic philosophers working on feminist theory. Coming up with the former has been at least somewhat doable, but the latter is proving really difficult. Any help would be very much appreciated- either through a blog post, or through suggestions.
It seems to me a very important part of the response to this would be pointing out the high numbers of white men on the rest of their reading lists, and taking a close look at the concept of “unfairly biased”. However, I think it can also be important to show students that men can be feminists and that white people can be anti-racist. So please put your favourite suggestions in comments!
Feminist Philosophers 
There are tons of men writing on the ways patriarchy oppresses them. I have at least 6 books laying around right now. Men Speak Out, Macho Paradox, etc. The trick is to make sure that the material isn’t about a male theorist’s position on women’s oppression. This would contradict the goal and support the idea that it’s only true if men say so.
Thanks, Shay. I’m not sure I agree with you about male theorists writing on women’s oppression. I think there’s something important about showing students that men can and should be indignant about women’s oppression. In fact, I’d find it a little creepy to have men talking only about how much *they* suffer under patriarchy without a thought to women’s suffering (or white people talking about how much racial divisions harm white people, etc).
I find the student complaint…unfortunately (to be polite).
But, it’s easy enough to throw a few (good) sops. My personal favorites are Mill “On the Subjection of Women”, which has the excellent hothouse flower metaphor. Marilyn Frye’s “On Being White” from the Politics of Reality and “White Woman Feminist” from Willful Virgin provide a nice progression. (It’s great to ask what made Frye move from the analysis in On Being White…plus, Frye’s always good.)
“Unfortunate”, not “unfortuantely”. Oh well.
It sounds to me like some of your students are suffering from unconscious racism. Do they make such claims in their history, anthropology, philosophy, and economics courses? I highly doubt it. They take the status quo as is, that is, whiteness is the norm. It is only when the topic actually turns to the disenfranchised and marginalized articulating their own situation that such voices become biased! Amazing. Check out Sullivan’s Revealing Whiteness: The Unconscious Habits of White Privilege.
Larry May and James Sterba both come to mind as men having done work on feminist theory.
I wish to second Mill’s “On the Subjection of Women” whose history also raises issues about gender and authorship (it is developed from the ideas of his wife Harriet Taylor, who possibly co-authored a lot of what we attribute to J. S.).
You could pair “Subjection” with Taylor’s “The Enfranchisement of Women”.
The blog, gender, race and philosophy (on our blogroll) has a number of men participating or mentioned at various points. Here’s one from there with a conference on bias, and i don’t think all of the men are black…
http://sgrp.typepad.com/sgrp/2011/06/conference-on-bias.html
Eduoard Machery has a number of articles on racism, as does Ron Mallon.
Other important sources: John Dovidio, a sociologist, but with a philosopher’s eye. I think he’s at Yale.
Another thing they might do is look at the white men working for justice for women and minorities. With regard to the latter, one might look at the Innocence project (for Texas: http://ipoftexas.org/index.php?action=board-of-directors), or the role of white guys in signing up black voters diring the civil rights movement.
And how about nickolas kristoff in the NYTimes for concerns about women. Also Amartya Sen, who made the problem of the missing women very visible.
There are lots of men working on the issues; if a comparable concern is not present among men in philosophy, there are plenty of models elsewhere. So one strategy is to question whether they need articles to show men agree about the injustice.
I don’t know about “On the Subjection of Women” being developed from the ideas of Harriet Taylor; evidence from Mill’s biography seems to back up his claim in that essay that he was concerned about the oppression of women from quite early on (that is, from before he met Taylor). One of the most enthusiastic proponents of the idea that Taylor was a major contributor to Mill’s work was, of course, Mill, and while given the content of the essay one can hardly imagine that they wouldn’t have discussed it, he doesn’t credit her to the extent that he does in, say, “On Liberty.”
Here’s an nteresting blog by mmen who are feminists:
http://www.xyonline.net/
sally haslanger is white but does stuff on both gender and race – maybe try “Gender and Race: (What) Are they? (What) Do we want them to be?”
It’s not really an addition for their reading list, but you could direct them to Hugo Schwyzer’s blog (http://www.hugoschwyzer.net/blog/).
You might have seen David Concepcion’s name in emails recently because he advises the student journal STANCE out of Ball State. He’s also a philosopher of feminism, has been published in Hypatia and other journals, and has co-authored, with Juli Eflin, a really splendid article on teaching feminist philosophy. Your students might find their high degree of attention to the genders of the instructors and the students to be of interest (see Teaching Philosophy, 2009, 32.2).
I would also second the recommendation of works of Jim Sterba and Larry May. Jim Cheney has done important work in ecofeminism. David Boonin has done splendid pro-feminist work on abortion. Tom Digby has been a Man Doing Feminism for decades — heck, half the men in this list are from Digby’s classic book, _Men Doing Feminism_. Todd Calder is just starting out but already contributed to the anthology in honor of Claudia Card. These are just the guys off the top of my head! All of them probably know of more.
And white scholars on race can be found in Christine Cuomo’s _Whiteness: Feminist Philosophical Reflections_. There’s Christine, herself. But see also Lisa Tessman, Alison Bailey (who cites Elizabeth Spelman, Marilyn Frye, Peggy McIntosh). See Claudia Card’s chapter, “Race Consciousness,” in her early book, _Unnatural Lottery_. See Claudia’s “On Race, Racism and …[something — ethnicity?]”, and many of the other authors in Overcoming racism and sexism by Linda Bell and David Blumenfeld. I think Vicky Davion’s in that one, too. I think Claudia cites an article by Marcus Singer from the 1970s in that? Anyway, that’s good for now!
First, for men on feminist topics, I don’t think you can beat John Stoltenberg’s _Refusing to Be a Man_. He was Andrea Dworkin’s partner and has been doing feminist theory since the 1970s.
As for reading people of color on race and women on sexism, I followed this practice significantly because of a point made by Philip Hallie in “From Cruelty to Goodness,” to wit that it is the victim who is the authority on her or his own experiences. He notes that the Nazi guards in concentration camps could be quite unaware of the actual suffering. Epistemologically, asking a person about her own experience will generally give us the most accurate description of the experience.
This article began most of my classes on the philosophy of oppression for 18 years and succeeded in pre-empting the accusations of whining, exaggerating and making things up – not all but I’d say 95% of them.
I am convinced that if oppressors (most) knew and could feel the effects of their actions, fewer people would stand on the backs of others.
This first suggestion doesn’t really pertain, but Linda Alcoff’s essay, “What should White people do?” is one of my favourite pieces to give to my friends struggling with issues of whiteness and privilege. I also think Iris Young’s “5 faces of Oppression” could be useful in order to talk about the ‘structural’ relationship of gender and racial oppression, rather than JUST focusing on whiteness and masculinity alone as axes of privilege.
But, for a beautiful collection of essays with conflicting views on the relationship between men and feminism, there’s an anthology entitled “Men doing Feminism” with an essay by Tom Digby and men of all different backgrounds, gay, trans, men of colour, and even great essays by some of the most important women philosophers writing today.
L signing in here. I just want to thank everyone for these fantastic suggestions- the books/authors suggested are great, and the comments have also given me some ideas to help address the students. Thank you!!
Plenty of good suggestions have been made for readings so I won’t add any more. A few comments, though, speaking as a white male writing a dissertation on implicit race/gender bias.
Shay: “The trick is to make sure that the material isn’t about a male theorist’s position on women’s oppression. This would contradict the goal and support the idea that it’s only true if men say so.”
If one wants to mainstream feminist concerns, then all female line ups don’t help and attitudes like this seriously discourage men from writing on feminism.
sorry forgot to put in my details first time
Plenty of good suggestions have been made for readings so I won’t add any more. A few comments, though, speaking as a white male writing a dissertation on implicit race/gender bias.
Shay: “The trick is to make sure that the material isn’t about a male theorist’s position on women’s oppression. This would contradict the goal and support the idea that it’s only true if men say so.”
If one wants to mainstream feminist concerns, then all female line ups don’t help and attitudes like this seriously discourage men from writing on feminism.
Hi Peter,
I’m confused by your last paragraph. Are you critiquing what Shay wrote? I.e., is what Shay wrote an attitude which seriously discourage men from writing on feminism? If so I don’t see how, or, at least, how it does so objectionably. If in order to write about feminism, a man has to feel that discussion should revolve around male theorist’s positions, then, well, isn’t it probably good that they’re discouraged?
I agree, that making feminist courses a ghetto (i.e., all female at the price of no women elsewhere) would be the wrong tradeoff, but I think it’s rarely actually offered.
To put it another way, I’ve never felt disencouraged to write or read feminism by all or mostly female lineups. If I want validation for men doing philosophy, I just look everywhere.
I agree with Peter about Shay’s comment. At least as I read it, she was saying that men should discuss only patriarchy’s bad effects on *them*, that men have nothing useful to offer about ways that patriarchy affects women, and that it’s offensive for them to discuss patriarchy’s effects on women. I think all of these claims are false and damaging to philosophy, and that they would discourage well-intentioned men who care about the oppression of women from writing about it. (I don’t think that’s her intent, and I don’t think Peter does either.)
All-female lineups in feminism are problematic, too, in my opinion. I think we need to get men doing feminism, and that requires breaking down the stereotype that only women can do feminism.
by “damaging to philosophy” I meant “damaging to feminism”. But both are probably true.
I do think the all-female lineups issue is immensely tricky though: the male domination of the rest of the subject (outside feminist philosophy) really does make it a different situation from all-male lineups. So I can see both sides of this one.
Hi Jender,
I agree with Peter about Shay’s comment. At least as I read it, she was saying that men should discuss only patriarchy’s bad effects on *them*, that men have nothing useful to offer about ways that patriarchy affects women, and that it’s offensive for them to discuss patriarchy’s effects on women.
Ah! I didn’t get that reading. I read it as, “it shouldn’t be all about SOME MALE THEORIST (on women’s oppression)”, i.e., that the center should be on women’s oppression with a variety of takes and not on SOME MALE PHILOSOPHER.
Something like the difference in “Mill on Women” and “19th Century Feminist Voices”. The former is Mill centric (isn’t it interesting about Mill that he wrote “Subjection” and let’s consider how it relates to his other work and views), and, while great in a class on Mill, sucky in a class on feminism.
I don’t know if that’s the right reading :)
Re: all female lineups: yeah, exactly. If it supports ghettoization it’s probably bad; insofar as it gives desperately needed space, it’s probably good; etc.
Ah, OK, maybe I misread Shay. I think you and I are in agreement, Bijan.
I reread and, on second thoughts, think I have to say that, sorry Shay, I misread. I originally read it in the same way as Jender but I now think Bijan Parsia’s reading seems more charitable.
This may be somewhat off topic, but besides including male feminist writing, I would recommend including a least some critiques of feminist thought by women (who may still count as feminist philosophers), especially concerning more radical feminist thought. This further encourages the idea (in the mind of the defensive student) that finding philosophical worth (or not) in feminist thought isn’t a matter of being male or female. And I think something similar holds for philosophical discussions of race.
Ajkreider, are you thinking of something like Louise Antony’s “Quine as Feminist: the Radical Import of Naturalized Epistemology” essay, which expresses skepticism about feminist epistemologists? Susan Haack also has some criticisms of feminist epistemology, of course.