Online research in philosophy

Women themselves, for the most part, think of themselves as the sensible sex, whose business it is to undo the harm that comes of men's impetuous follies. For my part, I distrust all generalizations about women, favourable and unfavourable, masculine and feminine, ancient and modern; all alike, I should say, result from paucity of experience.

Drawing on the example of one specific Ethics Committee, the author delineates feminine and masculine styles of ethical decision making and work with the dying as two sides of what it means to be humanistic in patient care. The author draws particularly on the work of Carol Gilligan to differentiate feminine from masculine approaches.

Part III. Section 4. Full Autonomy - An Attainable Ideal: Maximal or full autonomy is an unrealistic goal for all people. Contrary to a common assumption, however, masculine socialization does not generally result in full autonomy, but rather in medial autonomy. Conformism is as much of an obstacle to the full autonomy of men as it is for women. Still, men in western cultures are more likely to be more autonomous than women, and this discrepancy calls for change.

Part II. Section 1. Recent Accounts of Autonomy: Emphasizing the problematic relationship between autonomy and socialization, Meyers explores prominent views of autonomy, including Robert Young's, Stanley Benn's, Harry Frankfurt's, Gerald Dworkin's, and Gary Watson's. Having identified three main models for "rescuing autonomy from socialization," she identifies a single defect underlying all of them - namely, their assumption that personal autonomy requires transcending socialization through free will.

Part III. Section 5. Autonomy-Enhancing Socialization: Meyers seeks a remedy for gendered inequality with respect to autonomy in processes of socialization. After critically examining proposals offered by Beauvoir, Chodorow, and Radcliffe Richards, Meyers describes a pedagogical model that fosters assertiveness and intimacy while avoiding the inculcation of aggression and that actively nurtures the development of autonomy skills.

Part III. Section 1. Theories of Socialization. Autonomy as autonomy competency acknowledges the necessity of socialization for autonomy. Preliminary to considering this claim in relation to gender, Meyers sketches three social scientific models of socialization - psychoanalysis, social learning, and cognitive development.

The split in our thinking between "masculine" and "feminine" is probably as old as language itself. Human beings seem to have a natural tendency to divide things into pairs: good/bad, light/dark, subject/object and so on. It is not surprising, then, that the male/female or masculine/feminine dichotomy is used to classify things other than men and women. Many languages actually classify all nouns as "masculine" or "feminine" (although not very consistently: for example, the Spanish masculine noun pollo means "hen", while the feminine polla is slang for "penis"). This is perfectly natural; it is part of the way categorisation works in language. This does not, however, mean that it is right. It is probably unimportant whether a table or a chair is thought of as masculine or feminine. It may not even be very important these days whether we think of the sun as male and the moon as female (like the ancient Greeks) or vice versa (like most of the German tribes). However, when we start associating abstract concepts like Reason or Nature with men and women, we run into serious difficulties.

The split in our thinking between "masculine" and "feminine" is probably as old as language itself. Human beings seem to have a natural tendency to divide things into pairs: good/bad, light/dark, subject/object and so on. It is not surprising, then, that the male/female or masculine/feminine dichotomy is used to classify things other than men and women. Many languages actually classify all nouns as "masculine" or "feminine" (although not very consistently: for example, the Spanish masculine noun pollo means "hen", while the feminine polla is slang for "penis"). This is perfectly natural; it is part of the way categorisation works in language. This does not, however, mean that it is right. It is probably unimportant whether a table or a chair is thought of as masculine or feminine. It may not even be very important these days whether we think of the sun as male and the moon as female (like the ancient Greeks) or vice versa (like most of the German tribes). However, when we start associating abstract concepts like Reason or Nature with men and women, we run into serious difficulties.

Part III. Section 3. Autonomy and Feminine Socialization: Having agreed with Beauvoir that narcissism and altruism contribute to women's lack of autonomy, Meyers examines Beauvoir's account of autonomy in light of her own conception of autonomy competency and argues that Beauvoir's conception of autonomy is too stringent. Autonomy competency, in contrast, allows for degrees of autonomy and variations in degree as viewed over a life-time, as well as for a distinction between programmatic and episodic autonomy. Meyers concludes by characterizing minimal, medial, and full autonomy.