All men are created equal

Another thought on language and gender.

Sentences such as "all men are created equal" are ambiguous. Does the word "men" refer to men, or does it refer to men and women? Usage today is mixed, with most people saying "people" when they want to refer to men and women, and some people using "men" to refer to all members of humanity.

But when this phrase was written in the Declaration of Independence in 1776, to announce the value of democratic government and speak against the divine right of kings, it did refer to men specifically, and in particular to white, property-holding men. For this reason, Elizabeth Cady Stanton referred to but modified the phrase in her 1848 Declaration of Sentiments to say that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal."

Some students in my feminist theory class say they see no harm in referring to humanity as men. One argument given in favor of this practice is that everyone already knows that 'men' in this context means 'everyone.'

However, the question of whether 'men' really means 'men and women' (or even 'white men and black men') becomes politically relevant in the context of originary interpretations of the Constitution. Originalists believe that the Constitution grants only those rights which were actually intended by the people who wrote it or who approved its later amendments.

At times, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia appears to be a strict originalist. For instance in an interview he recently denied that the 14th amendment can be used to protect the rights of women (in spite of decades of Supreme Court precedent). While saying that it could be used to deny them those rights.

From what I can tell in this interview, he does not deny that women can be given civil rights. But any rights that women have (other than the right to vote), would have their origin in legislation. Unlike men's rights, they are not constitutional rights.

Here's part of what Justice Scalia has said:

Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't.

More here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/darren-hutchinson/post_1524_b_804382.html

Buying Out Research

It doesn't take an ethicist to sniff out something wrong with BP's consulting contracts with marine and geo- scientists--or a philosopher of science to show why this way of funding scientists will silence rather than drive knowledge production. But it's worth talking about any way:

From the Telegraph:

BP has been accused of “buying” the silence of some of the world’s leading scientists and academics to help build its legal defence against litigation after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

AOS: Early Modern AOC: Criminal Justice

File this one under "history of the profession." (Click the image for a larger version.)

My fellow philosopher of science Jack Sanders tells this story:

I saved this ad from Jobs in Philosophy, sometime in 1976. It was posted by the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department (ad #24). I later heard that the deal was that the Sheriff of Jefferson County had studied Nietzsche as an undergraduate (or something), and wanted someone to talk to. The fact that one had to provide one's own weapon and boots was one of the highlights of the ad among us grad students looking for work... none of the other ads in JiP required that.

I also suspect that this ad may have been one of the motivating factors behind Jobs in Philosophy later changing its name to Jobs for Philosophers, but I guess you never know...

Wade Robison corrects him on one point:

Spinoza! He did his dissertation on Spinoza and wanted a colleague with a specialty in Spinoza. Gerry McCallum at Wisconsin was in charge of the JIP committee then and went up to the room in the hotel to check because it sounded bogus.

Legal Rights for Nature

Here is an article from yesterday's Boston Globe, "Sued by the forest: Should nature be able to take you to court?"

The idea of granting legal standing to natural entities is not a new one. In the case that spurred this article, a town in Maine passed an ordinance that grants rights to "natural communities and ecosystems" in order to try to protect their aquifers from taking by the Nestle corporation (which bottles the water under the Poland Spring label). What's interesting is that rights are granted to natural, non-human entities in order to protect them from another non-human entity, a corporation.

So the question that has to be raised is whether granting rights to ecosystems will solve the problem of mis-use by corporations. History would suggest that, instead, corporations (who can pay for very, very clever lawyers) are likely to find ways of subverting ordinances or even using them to their advantage. The real problem is that corporations are not accountable to all the moral considerations that human communities believe are worth accounting for. 

I've been reading about cases of indigenous populations who have been displaced directly or indirectly by conservation projects. These cases create moral dilemmas for environmentalists. Preserving ecosystems and species is a valuable goal, but at what human cost? A legal framework that gives rights to ecosystems could be used to justify protected areas that displace humans. It would, in some sense, be a simple solution that would settle the problem. But it would settle it in a way that is too easy because it would not work through the moral balancing of the needs of nature vs. the needs of humans.

Paradigms, Perspectival Knowing, and Politics

Here's a short commentary on the media coverage of Supreme Court Justice nominee Sotomayor's confirmation hearing.

The author's application of Kuhn seems like a stretch based on my own reading but is well in line with popular applications of lessons learned from SSR.  I like the example of flashers. If men don't see flashers and women do, this difference is due to attentional and interpretive reasons and also to the fact that flashers simply aren't as likely to flash men as women. We know different things and interpret reality differently from our diverse social positions in part because of our subjective operations but also because we have different experiences to start with. 

Animal Rights and Teaching Ethics

In my Introduction to Ethics class last year I taught food ethics, including animal rights, for the first time. I've shied away from the topic in the past, thinking that the students--or, at least, the students at places where I've taught--would consider it too fringe to make a direct connection with the underlying thought patterns.

On the final exam I asked a question, "What is the most memorable, challenging, or thought-provoking idea that was raised in this class?" 

The most popular, though least illuminating, answer was along the lines of "ethical theories." The second most common answer had to do with a film we watched about farm animal rights, called Wegman's Cruelty. I was surprised by this large response, particularly since discussions after the film were short and shallow.

The film documents animal-rights activists, led by Adam Durand, breaking into the Wegman's egg farm to (illegally) investigate whether the farm violates animal cruelty guidelines. It did, and the footage is dramatic. The case occurred in 2004.

I learned yesterday that Adam Durand is one of my neighbors, and that he has a court date for resentencing tomorrow. His original sentence was illegal and was appealed to the state supreme court. Our court system is often described as biased in favor of defendants. While that's true, there is also a clear bias toward entities that have the money and the power to drag court cases out for years and years. How surprising that this case, a minor case of trespassing, has been in the system for 5 years!

Shackling Women During Labor and Delivery

Forcing induced labor, forcing C-sections, using shackles during labor and restraints during delivery. These sound barbaric, surely not current practice, surely not here. Can a baby in the US, in the 21st century, be born to a mother in leg irons?

Via Feminist Law Profs (and here): a circuit court has ruled that shackling a pregnant inmate in labor does not constitute a violation of the 8th Amendment (that's the amendment which forbids punishments that are excessive or cruel and unusual). Only 2 states (Illinois and California) have legislation regulating the restraint of laboring women (and legislation is pending in my state, New York).

Never mind that restraints during labor, and especially shackles, pose a risk to the welfare of both mother and baby. An Amnesty International report notes that women in labor should be free to assume different positions and should be easily transportable to an operating room. Read a moving account and a 2006 NYT article. Lest you think that this applies to only the rare case, keep in mind that about 2,000 babies are born to incarcerated women each year.

That this could happen in the USA is no doubt linked to unfortunate and unethical intersecting social trends:
— erosion of prisoner rights
— denial of adequate health care to prisoners in the US
— the common practice of constraining laboring women to labor on their back for the sake of fetal monitoring
— lack of recognition of human rights for pregnant women

Breastfeeding rights update

In an appeal, Sophie Currier has won an accommodation of extra time for expressing breast milk during her Medical Board exam.

The appellate judge wrote that under the previous ruling, she would have to

use her break time to incompletely express breast milk and ignore her bodily functions, or abdicate her decision to express breast milk, resulting in significant pain.

He also wrote that ignoring her status as a lactating mother placed her at a "significant disadvantage in comparison to her peers."

The decision goes beyond the immediate context to publicize the medical and social imperative to support breastfeeding and to support women who choose to both be mothers and work outside the home.

Further thoughts are in this earlier post.

Judging Pay Inequity

This week's Supreme Court decision in the Ledbetter v. Goodyear case disables an important tool for addressing pay disparity between men and women. How can feminist philosophers address this decision?

Sadly, the decision endorses a burdensome barrier to filing discrimination claims but is not suited to a philosophical response. The majority decision is deceitful in that it does not openly question the legality or morality of workplace discrimination. It gives support to discriminatory practices without justifying the change on principle.

It is, however, suited to a political response, and the Congress should work to overturn the ruling.

A New York Times article analyzes the fact that Justice Ginsburg gave her strongly worded dissent orally:

The oral dissent has not been, until now, Justice Ginsburg’s style. She has gone years without delivering one, and never before in her 15 years on the court has she delivered two in one term. In her past dissents, both oral and written, she has been reluctant to breach the court’s collegial norms. “What she is saying is that this is not law, it’s politics,” Pamela S. Karlan, a Stanford law professor, said of Justice Ginsburg’s comment linking the outcome in the abortion case to the fact of the court’s changed membership. “She is accusing the other side of making political claims, not legal claims.”

Feminist Law Professors offer a brief analysis and many links.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dissent is here.