What’s it to you?

I’m around the halfway point in Ethics this semester and it’s time to start making decisions about registering for any Fall courses. Honestly, I’m considering giving up. It’s been a discouraging week for me as a vagina owner.

In class on Monday, we covered the Ethics of Care. It is widely considered feminist philosophy since it deals with emotions and interpersonal relationships. I consider that bullsh*t. It’s not feminist philosophy just because it was written by a woman. It’s philosophy. If your male mind needs to segregate it into it’s own category to understand it, that’s on you. It’s not groundbreaking to say that we should value relationships above all. In fact, that’s what we are saying with all our other is/oughts. The male philosophers we’ve covered explain stealing as wrong because if everyone did it there would be no such thing as personal property, or because society has made a moral agreement that the baker is entitled to earn money with his goods. These explanations are true, but feel unnecessarily complicated. Ultimately, we don’t steal because it f*cks up our relationship with the person who bakes our bread. Seeing the relationship as the moral priority is seeing reality. That seems obvious to me. Is that because I’m a woman?

Before getting into it, we spent twenty minutes covering 200 years and three waves of feminism by listing female philosophical contributors and the titles of their books. We didn’t spend a great deal of time discussing what those books said. I guess it’s assumed that they all said the same thing because no one gave any credence during first two waves. Outside of our equally brief unit on Native American philosophy last semester, these are the only female philosophers I have covered in the classroom.

I don’t blame my professor. It’s difficult to cover a concept that has not yet wholly been accepted by society. You can’t teach “the basics” of feminism if we’re still debating whether feminism is a worth while concept. We are all victims of the patriarchy we live in. Even community college professors. Even me. Simone de Beauvoir, a notable female philosopher, titled her book about women in society The Second Sex. She recognized the difference between men and women, acknowledged the inferior role women play as the result of social conditioning, and still thought it appropriate to rank our gender as second. What a missed opportunity. Where does she think all these men came from? I guess it’s possible she believes in the creation myth. As I mentioned, we didn’t spend time on her thoughts.

After class I had to do some reckoning internally. What is it that I am signing myself up for? Its a worthwhile topic, but writing philosophy about feminism doesn’t interest me, personally. If I’m not going to be heard in discussions on virtues, politics, or aesthetics, am I wasting my time and money? To repeat something that has been explained in all of the previous waves, it’s a choice between working twice (or three times) as hard as my male counterparts to achieve the same success, or bowing out and letting the status quo remain, forever living with a voice in my head whispering Its your fault nothing changed because you were too selfish and lazy to do the work to change it. That’s a sh*t choice.

Later in the week, I met with my professor to discuss my options moving forward and I shared with him my dejection about the lack of females in the field. He attempted to make me feel better by saying there was increasing diversity at the philosophical conferences he attends. There are more Asian men now. I understand what he was getting at, but it didn’t help.

I silently cursed the male authored essays I was assigned for homework, mentally drawing the distinctions between their thinking and the thoughts of the women I know. It seems men philosophize as though they’re aiming to control some foretold end result they are privy to. A piece by Garrett Hardin argued against aiding the starving poor because it would result in higher poor populations in the future. He says that crop failures and famine serve as necessary checks on population growth and our humane interference would muck things up. For who, exactly? Have fun explaining that to a five-year-old child as you remove the bowl of rice from her hands. “Sorry sweetie, I need you to be malnourished and infertile so you poories stop reproducing so quickly. The math works better for my quarterly projections.” Its ironic this same math never gets applied to the big banks or the oil industry. We couldn’t possibly watch them starve. Maybe its better the rich reproduce at slower rates. I find myself wondering how much Hardin was worth when he wrote the piece. Do you know what women did when confronted with famine and starvation? They invented agriculture.

This seems to be the divide between my philosophical approach and the philosophies of the men I have studied. I am not interested in crafting a tidy philosophical theory to explain the universe and then retrofitting all of society. I don’t even think that’s possible. What I am interested in is problem solving. What is needed for our planet to thrive? How could we get it? I can’t imagine endorsing a single theory, utilitarianism for example, because it seems idiotic to think the same way about every problem. Sure, it works great to decided which bottle of wine to order at dinner with friends, but what if the problem is more complex the white or red?

I’m being harsh on Mr. Hardin. I know he was arguing whether or not its morally bankrupt to let strangers starve. As I’ve written here many times, I also struggle to balance my altruism with my personal comforts. Perhaps his essay was an attempt to assuage his guilt for holding on to the cash Peter Singer said he should send to a world food bank. Because Hardin’s let-them-starve-solution to famine isn’t really a solution at all, is it? Maybe it’s the mother in me, but I cannot abide starving a child now because there might be two in the future. It seems much more intuitive (and helpful) to try and solve both problems at once. Wasn’t there a study somewhere that found women to be better at multitasking?

On second thought, maybe there is a philosophical difference between myself and men. There is a unique risk assessment skillset that is honed while surviving womanhood. Men might not get the chance to become familiar with that. There are also thousands of generations of mothering wisdom stored inside me. Perhaps this makes women more philosophical naturally, and that’s why so many of the concepts developed by men feel unnecessarily contrived to me? We can’t predict how our moral actions today will change our world tomorrow. When I acknowledge I’m not privy to the end result ahead of time, I act with hope for the most peace for everyone. Childrearing itself is an act of blind hope not unlike the hope for world peace. With my kids (my beings) I aim to cultivate joy and peace in and around them. And, because I care, I spend a great deal of time and energy collecting feedback from the beings around my beings, as well as my beings themselves, and then do my best to measure their peace and joy. Mothers traditionally put in tremendous effort without knowing the guaranteed outcome on the other side. It’s wise to aim your site at best case scenario. When you distill your mind to cultivate a peaceful and joyful result, I think you settle on kindness and nourishment as the proper course of action every time.

It’s frustrating that on the subject of care men and women are separated by their moral sensibilities. And that finally we get to hear from women—as if this is the only area they are allowed to chime in on. I guess it’s possible there has never been a female utilitarian. Hardin did say there was no way a ship could be run by committee. Um… yes, I believe with good communication it could. If you can’t entertain an idea like that, I don’t think I can take anything else you say seriously. I can’t understand his black and white thinking. Some days it feels like such an uphill battle that it’s not even worth it. Part of me wants to work my ass off and rule these f*cks and part of me wants to stick to art, smoke pot, and make a thousand watercolor paintings of vaginas.