Philosophy 152 Philosophy of Human Nature Darwall Fall 1996 DE BEAUVOIR II I Continuing discussion of the Ethics of Ambiguity Especially: how does what De Beauvoir characterizes as "the passionate man" compare with Sartre's ideal? II Next week we will turn to the Second Sex and to Peter Loptson's chapter on feminism. We should begin with some preliminaries concerning gender. A. Gender vs. Sex B. Gender as a group characterization III Questions: Are their forms of injustice that women face as a group? Is there such a thing as gender injustice? IV Some relevant international data: A. Amartya Sen's measure of "missing women", i.e., the number of women not alive today but who would have been had they received nutrition and health care equal to that given to males: 100 million B. Each year 100 million girls suffer genital mutilation. C. Approximately one million children, mostly girls, per year are forced into prostitution. D. In South Asia, female literacy rates are half those of males. In Afghanistan 32%, in Sudan 27%. E. One third of women in Barbados, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, and the U.S. report having been sexually abused as children or adolescents. F. In the U.S. in 1993, 1,530 women were killed by their partners. And each year approximately 7 million women in the U.S. report being subject to various forms of physical violence at the hand of their male partners. V Here we see evidence of the subordination of women. What does this involve? What role, if any, does the concept of gender play in it? Can we understand the concept of gender indepedently of the phenomenon of subordination? VI Does gender play any role in the philosophers we have read to this point. Explicit? Implicit? A. Aristotle on the natural subordination of women. B. Freud. What role should gender play in our understanding of human beings?