In our second debate, we'll ask: Can justice co-exist with gender?
The question comes by feminist philosopher Susan Moller Okun, who maintains that gender inequality is so deeply embedded in social structures that it infects the very idea of fairness and thus the theory and practice of justice. As Okun puts it:
[I]f principles of justice are to be adopted unanimously by representative human beings ignorant of their particular characteristics and positions in society, they must be persons whose psychological and moral development is in all essentials identical. This means the social factors influencing the differences presently found between the sexes — from female parenting to all the manifestations of female subordination and dependence — would have to be replaced by genderless institutions and customs. Only children who are equally mothered and fathered can develop fully the psychological and moral capacities that currently seem to be unevenly distributed between the sexes. Only when men participate equally in what have been principally women’s realms of meeting the daily material and psychological needs of those close to them, and when women participate equally in what have been principally men’s realms of larger scale production, government, and intellectual and artistic life, will members of both sexes be able to develop a more complete human personality than has hitherto been possible. Whereas Rawls and most other philosophers have assumed that human psychology, rationality, moral development, and other capacities are completely represented by the males of the species, this assumption itself has now been exposed as part of the male-dominated ideology of our gendered society. (“Justice as Fairness: For Whom?” 107)Group 3 will argue that justice can exist in a gendered society. Group 4 will argue that justice can only exist in a genderless society.
I've put the Okun reading on Blackboard. Please note that your group need not limit its arguments to Okun's. You should craft your own arguments, drawing on Okun or inventing original arguments as the group sees fit. The important thing is that your arguments be clear, coherent, persuasive, and capable of holding up to criticism.
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| The Gender-Swapped Justice League |
