Malware

As I read the essay on feminist ethics two questions come to my mind: what is the end goal? Is it achievable? Maybe more importantly would be the question; do we want to achieve it? This is a classic case of what you want may not actually be what is best for you or your society.

I would imagine that the end goal for the feminist, if indeed the feminist is the torch bearer for all oppressed peoples as the writer states, is an equal and pleasurable society. A counter to this might be that the idea of an equal and pleasurable society is utopian and unachievable, but I do not take that stance. Hopeless submission to tyranny is a poor argument to make, and it is tyranny that feminists claim to be obstructed by (patriarchy, white privilege, cist privilege, heterosexuality, dominant hierarchies= tyrannical groups). So, a proper and moral argument would be to first concede that a world free of tyranny is a world worth hoping for and fighting for. The question worth asking is, “what is equity?” We can all agree that total equality is neither useful nor achievable, so an intellectually honest feminist might answer “equal opportunity,” but he or she will most likely instead answer “lack of oppression.” They likely then will conclude that oppression and poor treatment of minority groups and women—lets just say anything that is not a white, straight, male—is not equality, therefore equality might be lack of oppression.

So, this may answer our first question as it relates to equality; the end goal is equality and therefore absence of oppression. Since any rationally minded person can agree that absence of oppression is “good” in our society, we then must ask the second question: “Is it achievable?”

I can only think of one means that could potentially achieve equality: government and law. Since we cannot, even as much as we try, police thought, we must then police actions in hopes to get to the thought. If we cannot train our pets to be polite to guests, we must train them to fear punishment for poor manners. To police actions, we must have a government willing to forego the liberty of the individual, therefore a government willing to police thoughts through policing actions. A government such as this must be willing to implement their viewpoints on their citizens and must then take the responsibility of achieving equity into their own hands. Thus, our thoughts would then be adequately policed through our actions which were governed not by liberty but by law.

The above explanation also then answers the question of whether or not this is worth achieving: No. If we are to place the responsibility of our own critical thought in the hands of a governing party, we have submitted all liberty and free-will (if you’re into that sort of thing), subsequently giving permissions to access our hard-drives of belief. I will grant that a lawless society is a dangerous society, but loss of liberty is not to be taken lightly. Arguing in favor of identity politics is an argument that a government should govern on merit of sex, skin color, or sexual orientation. Furthermore, it does not protect the individuals right to choose how they might perceive their surrounding environment, and this is not even a law God would impose.