The Tragedy of Womens Emancipation - Essay Example

There are some people that would wish to declare that the glass ceiling has been removed for women and minorities in the U.S. Compared with fifty orone hundred years ago, the conditions for both groups have improved considerably. However, the recent news coverage of the Democratic nominees has brought to like underlying tensions under the bright lights of the media. It is, in fact, a big step forward to have a nominee for president that will not be both white and male. This has brought out people’s underlying emotions regarding race and gender. Obviously, if we are still being asked if a person’s attitudes towards females and minorities would influence the decision to vote for a candidate or not, there can not be said to be true equality for all. While many of the overt obstacles towards equality have been dealt with through legislature, this does not mean that people will automatically change their minds. Considering this, much of what has been written in the past about gender and equality still hold true today. There is an idealized notion of what equality means today, namely, that all people have the ability to do as they desire without other people attempting to limit their efforts based on any sort of preconceptions of race or gender. In discussing gender specifically, one must conclude that although attitudes have improved in general, there is still much in the way of individuals’ attitudes that must be accepting of differences in gender and sex before true equality can exist between males and females. Immanuel Kant attempted to lay a framework for the ways in which morality would function in Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. He stated that “Intelligence, wit, judgment…are doubtless in many respects good and desirable. But they can become extremely bad and harmful if the will…is not good” (612). He was stating that these traits by themselves could not lead people into moral behavior. To relate this to equality, intelligence, wit and judgment, these traits alone cannot lead a person to treat all people in a moral fashion. Morality is not inherent upon anything but a good will. If a person is to discuss morality, obviously one cannot make any sort of value judgments about who deserves to be morally treated based upon gender alone. As Kant says, “To be kind where one can is duty…that kind of action alone has no true moral worth” (613). Duty in itself, he is stating, has no inherent morality in and of itself. Actions are in need of conscious intentions in order to subject to morality. When we are dealing with rational beings, such as all human beings are, then our actions take on moral implications: “Such as end is one for which no other end can be substituted to which these beings should serve merely as means” (620). The basis of rational thought cannot be delineated by gender; obviously women are capable of being as rational as men. In this we can see that there is no grounds upon which we can morally disregard the rights of women. There can be no real arguments against the rationality of women that does not make the person putting forth this view appear immoral. Though Kant does not directly speak on women’s issues, we can see how his views of morality can be applied to equality for women. John Stuart Mills wrote specifically on women’s issues in his essay “On the Subjection of Women.” In it, he takes issues in the ways that women aren’t treated with equality: “that principle which regulates the existing social relation between the two sexes—the legal subordination of one sex by the other—is wrong itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement.” As this writer relates it, the legal subjection of during this time period was not only wrong, but it was the main obstacle that prevented society from bettering itself. In this view equality becomes the defining factor of society; without it society cannot be improved and shall be stuck in its current state without hopes of improvement. To Mills, equality is the single most defining factor for society, and the lack of it as he saw it was the issue that he felt most strongly about. According to Mills, the view of inequality carried by those at the time had no logical merit to it; it was all based in opinion: “So long as opinion is strongly rooted in the feelings, it gains rather than loses instability by having a preponderating weight of argument against it.” In this view, while some issue might gain by having people believe in it strongly, inequality was a weaker case to argue because there was less of any sort of solid idea behind it. It was to the advantage of equality that people that were against it were so because of emotions less than reason. In the essay, Mills goes on to compare the view of equality for all as being o trial; it is innocent until proven guilty: “Again, in practical matters, the burden of proof is supposed to be with those who are against liberty.” In this view, Mills is saying that it is up to people that are against liberty to show why it is wrong. Equality to Mills is not a position that has to be defended; rather it is up to those that are against it to show how and why they are against it. He felt that no one was able to do so at the time, and that with this being the case, the case for equality was logically the only view that should be supported at that time. Without any evidence against it, it was the only moral view that one could take. Emma Goldman put forward her opinion in the essay “The Tragedy of Women’s Emancipation,” that the current state of liberty that was being given to women was the wrong way in which to go about allowing liberty and equality for women. In her view, she seemed to feel as though that women weren’t being allowed the kind of freedom that allowed for them to keep individuality: “The problem that confronts us today, and which the nearest future is to solve, is how to be one’s self and yet be in oneness with others, to feel deeply with all human beings and still retain one’s own characteristic qualities.” Goldman here is referring to people’s otherness, and in particular she is referring to women’s otherness. In her view, people are not the same uniformly. If not all women are the same uniformly, then there can be no justification to treat them uniformly in this manner. She is going so far as saying that it is the uniform treatment of women that has caused women to be subjected. If women are to enjoy true equality, Goldman states that they have to be allowed be find their own way to unction: “Indeed , if partial emancipation is to become true emancipation of women, it will have to do away with the ridiculous notion that to be loved, to be sweetheart and mother, is synonymous with being slave or subordinate.” She is stating here that women need to be allowed to function in all roles that they wish to. In partial emancipation, they are given freedom by behaving in the way a man would behave. For true emancipation they need to be able to be free to do as they wish and not feel as though they are being treated as less than an equal. Truly, being told that one cannot fulfill the role of mother or wife without being a slave is not being given any kind of freedom at all; there is no real choice being offered in the matter. Simone de Beauvoir, author of the seminal text The Second Sex, states that the very idea of being a woman is in danger and has come under attack with new attitudes found in social and biological sciences. She asks the question of what exactly it means to be a woman, if merely having a womb is no longer a satisfactory definition of being a woman: And yet we are told that femininity is in danger; we are exhorted to be women, remain women, become women. It would appear, then, that every female human being is not necessarily a woman; to be so considered she must share in that mysterious and threatened reality known as femininity. She also goes on to state that the duality of the terms “male/female“ only add to this attack on the term female. As the term male is the tern that is generally used to function in common use as “human beings,” this leaves it so the term “woman represents only the negative, defined by limiting criteria, without reciprocity.” With these sort or definitions, Beauvoir states that women cannot be described as full members of the human race, and without even being acknowledged as an equal, there can be no hope for equality. To Beauvoir, it is man that has ascribed woman’s place in the second position, the “second sex.” She has become an object, the other, and this is the source of women’s inequality. The otherness in this sense has become a negative, because women have been placed in this position, as opposed to choosing to embrace their own otherness. What most of this comes down to is the ability to choose one’s own path. According to Goldman, women need to be able to choose to be a mother or wife without being a slave. To Beauvoir, the very definition of woman has been made by man, and it is only in the ability to define oneself that one will have the ability to be equal. Today’s world is making steps towards giving women the ability to choose themselves. It can be seen in the language. Whereas, as Beauvoir pointed out, the usage of the male identity to account for people in language, such as a sentence like “everyone knows what he wants,” more and more often in the common vernacular the word “they” is being for the pronoun in cases of singular indefinites. While to some language usage might not seem much, the overall ability of women to enjoy complete equality lies in people’s minds and opinions. Since language is the tool we use to communicate our feelings and opinions, it is perhaps one of the most important aspects of liberty and equality. For it is in the mind that we can all be free. Works Cited De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. 1949. Available online from http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/de-beauvoir/2nd-sex/index.htm Goldman, Emma. “The Tragedy of Women’s Emancipation.” New York & London: Mother Earth Publishing Association, 1911. pp. 219-231. Available online from Kant, Immanuel. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. Philosophical Problems, eds. Bonjour, Laurence, Baker, Ann, Pearson Education, Inc. , New York, 2005 Mills, John Stuart. “The Subjection of Women,” Available online from Read More