Personal Responsibility
It's always difficult to know what to do when you hear somebody who you consider an ally to your cause using arguments that you would call bullshit on if offered by those in an opposing camp. If this happens in a small circle of friends, no problem, because usually you can point out the possible problem without people thinking you are trying to undermine their point--friends know that you may very well agree with their point and just not like how they got there.
But in larger social and political situations, it's tougher. You might explicitly state that you agree with the conclusion and not with how it was arrived at, but it still might, to some people, undermine the point.
An example is happening over on Feministe right now--in my mind, people are oversimplifying personal responsibility regarding rape in a way that they wouldn't want to oversimplify personal responsibility when it comes to, say, the number of female CEO's of big corporations (pointing to the glass ceiling) or to the skewed number of not-white people caught up in the US justice system (pointing to the racism). I took some time to formulate a position in a comment there--check it out if you're interested, because I think it's an interesting discussion (with or without my comment!).
Filed under:Feminism and Philosophy
It's always difficult to know what to do when you hear somebody who you consider an ally to your cause using arguments that you would call bullshit on if offered by those in an opposing camp. If this happens in a small circle of friends, no problem, because usually you can point out the possible problem without people thinking you are trying to undermine their point--friends know that you may very well agree with their point and just not like how they got there.
But in larger social and political situations, it's tougher. You might explicitly state that you agree with the conclusion and not with how it was arrived at, but it still might, to some people, undermine the point.
An example is happening over on Feministe right now--in my mind, people are oversimplifying personal responsibility regarding rape in a way that they wouldn't want to oversimplify personal responsibility when it comes to, say, the number of female CEO's of big corporations (pointing to the glass ceiling) or to the skewed number of not-white people caught up in the US justice system (pointing to the racism). I took some time to formulate a position in a comment there--check it out if you're interested, because I think it's an interesting discussion (with or without my comment!).
Filed under:Feminism and Philosophy
posted by Jeff Pollet at 9:51 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home