Alternatively, perhaps we can fully explain the wrong of slavery via the “irrelevant characteristic” account. There is no moral problem with humans owning machines and treating the machines as chattel. There is a problem with humans owning other humans and treating them as chattel. What explains this difference? It is the fact that there are relevant differences between machines and humans. It is these differences that make it wrong to own humans but not machines. When people have thought that some humans may be owned on account of their “race,” they have mistakenly taken a person’s “race” to be a relevant difference from those humans who may not be owned. They have mistakenly treated being black as being like a machine or some other object that may be owned. According to this explanation, it is wrongful discrimination that explains why the wrong of slavery is inflicted on particular people. A given person is enslaved only because of his race. Had he been a member of another race he would not have been enslaved.
Now, even if one rejects these responses to Professors Frye and Wasserstrom and maintains that sexism is not merely a matter of treating people differently on the basis of an irrelevant characteristic, one need not embrace their definitions of sexism. One could retain the view that sexism is unfair or wrongful discrimination on the basis of a person’s sex, but deny that this consists of treating people differently on the basis of their sex when their sex is indeed irrelevant. One could prefer an alternative account of wrongful discrimination, while still identifying sexism as wrongful discrimination. Rejecting the “irrelevant characteristic” account of wrongful discrimination does not entail the view that sexism must satisfy a systemic criterion or must involve domination, subordination or oppression.
So far I have argued that we do not need to abandon the understanding of sexism as wrongful discrimination on the basis of a person’s sex. Now I wish to say why we should not abandon it in favor of the alternatives I have outlined. Accepting the requirement that discrimination be systemic and involve subordination, domination or oppression would do violence to ordinary language.
In our ordinary usage, we speak of prejudicial and discriminatory “isms” in the absence of overall and systemic disempowerment. If a teacher were to assess a student’s work more harshly merely because that student was white or male, we would ordinarily label that action racist or sexist (in addition to being wrong on other grounds). People do use the words “racism” and “sexism” in such contexts. Nor is this usage restricted to non-philosophers. Peter Singer, for example, understands speciesism and racism in terms of treating beings differently on the basis of arbitrary or irrelevant differences.22
Perhaps my opponents think that although we do use words like “sexism” and “racism” in these ways we should not do so. Perhaps they are recommending that we alter our usage and use the word “sexism” in a more restricted way. These definitional issues are difficult. We cannot categorically say that ordinary usage must prevail. Such usage is sometimes both confused and confusing. However, it is not clear that this is true in the case at hand. Moreover, there is a danger in stipulative definitions that depart too significantly from ordinary usage. They themselves can be confusing or misleading. If, to choose an extreme example, one defines Monday as the day after Tuesday, one will not be contributing positively to clearer thinking and communication.
It is possible to stipulate that males cannot be the victims of sexism or, less blatantly, that group members cannot be victims of sexism or racism unless those groups are disempowered or subordinated. However, it is hard to see why such stipulations should be made. Indeed, doing so seems to have implications that would be unpalatable even to many of those who make them. A racial epithet directed against a rich and powerful member of the Kenyan government would widely and rightly be recognized as racist, even though the epithet would not lead to an overall disempowerment or subordination of blacks in Kenya. Nor does the target group need to be a majority. Jews in the United States, for example, today enjoy a degree of equality and influence unprecedented in Jewish history. They are not (contrary to the view of some antisemites) controlling the country, but they are hardly disempowered or subordinated. Isolated anti-Jewish epithets in the United States do not plausibly effect an overall disempowering or subordination of Jews in that country, but they would nonetheless appropriately be recognized as instances of antisemitism.
In response to these examples, perhaps it will be suggested that they are instances of racism and antisemitism because there is a history of discrimination against blacks and Jews. According to this view, it does not matter whether, in a given place, that pattern of discrimination continues. It is sufficient that it did previously continue for a long time. Notice, however, that this pedigree criterion of racism and antisemitism is even more controversial than the other features of the alternative definitions I reject.
There is a further problem with stipulating that only disempowered, subordinate or oppressed groups can be the victims of sexism (or racism). It may well be the case that females are no longer systematically disempowered, subordinated or oppressed in developed countries. Many feminists will be outraged at this suggestion. I shall delay, until the concluding chapter, my defense of this suggestion. For now, it is sufficient to make two observations.
First, power is spectral rather than binary. One has more or less of it, rather than either having it or not having it. Accordingly, even if men still have overall power in the developed world, the erosion of male power has taken place gradually. On this trajectory, there comes a point at which men no longer hold most power and at which women, while still the victims of discrimination, are no longer subordinated or dominated. Those who assert that the term “sexism” only applies where one group is dominant or another subordinate must concede that discrimination against females would not constitute sexism once that point is reached. I find that implausible. If my critics recognized that that point had already been reached in some places, they would likely find it implausible too.
Second, some feminists have recognized that to say, for example, that women in the developed world are still oppressed, they must depart from the traditional understanding of “oppression” and employ a new understanding of this term.23 In this way the definitional questions recur. We are asked to reinterpret “sexism” in such a way that oppression is a criterion for it, but then we are asked to reinterpret “oppression” in such a way that the word “sexism” can still be applied to contexts in which it still seems to have application. With all this reinterpretation that is required, one wonders why it would not be more economical — and truer to ordinary usage — just to stick with the common understanding of “sexism.”
I have now presented and rejected some representative alternatives to my understanding of sexism. It is worth noting, however, that less rests on this disagreement than might first appear. Let us assume, merely for the sake of argument, that sexism should not be understood in the way I have suggested it should be understood. And let us assume further that for this reason men cannot be the victims of sexism. If that were the case then there could be no second sexism. However, nothing would follow from this about a second sex discrimination. Men and boys could still be the victims of wrongful sex discrimination.24 Even if that were not appropriately called sexism it would still be worthy of moral concern and opposition. Wrongful discrimination is wrongful and could be quite seriously so. Thus the really important conclusion for which I need to argue is that males are the victims of wrongful discrimination (or even merely wrongful treatment) on the basis of their sex. I happen to think that such discrimination merits the name “sexism” but even if I were incorrect about that, my critics could not justify, on that basis, any complacency about the wrongful discrimination of which males are the victims.25 It would still be a problem that should be recognized and confronted. It is much more important that wrongful discrimination against men and boys be identified and opposed than that we call it “sexism.” The fact that labeling wrongful discrimination as “sexism” is not essential to its being wrong and worthy of opposition might explain why some feminists have either barely mentioned the word “sexism” or failed to give a full account of what it is.26
22
Peter Singer,
23
Iris Marion Young,
24
And if anybody objects to that term, we might simply say that they are the victims of injustice, or simply that they are wrongly treated.
25
Some might suggest that if females are the greater victims of sex discrimination than males that we are, on that basis, justified in focusing on anti-female sex discrimination. I reject that argument in the “Distraction” section of Chapter 5.
26
For example, Betty Friedan,