It’s not necessary to be in a relationship. Nor is it necessary to engage in sexual relations within the relationship. But there is social pressure to be in a (hetero-normative) relationship and to perform sex acts. Dworkins’ first point is that this pressure is gendered. The social norms function to make women feel worse for violating them than men. And the amount of pressure isn’t close.
Dworkins’ suggested response is to remake society to remove (and prohibit) this type of pressure. Whether she admits it or not, this conflicts with “freedom of speech.” But so do most anti-discrimination and anti-group defamation laws (the latter have not been generally implemented in the United States). That doesn’t meet we must implement Dworkins’ vision to avoid hypocrisy. But I think it is valuable to notice the trade-off we are making. To use economic language, one might call the gendered norms an opportunity cost of arranging society the way we have.
And if the referenced norms seem wrong to you, then you ought not to think of Dworkin as an idiot. Feel free to continue thinking badly of Mary Daly (with my blessing and encouragement).
Dworkin is from the school of thought that helped us notice those particular costs of the setup. If post-modern thought doesn’t appear, we might not notice any of the problems it identified.
I suggest that post-modern thought looks foolish now because more mainstream thought appropriated and applied most of its greatest insights. What “remains” of post-modern thought is much less insightful.
It’s not necessary to be in a relationship. Nor is it necessary to engage in sexual relations within the relationship. But there is social pressure to be in a (hetero-normative) relationship and to perform sex acts. Dworkins’ first point is that this pressure is gendered. The social norms function to make women feel worse for violating them than men. And the amount of pressure isn’t close.
Dworkins’ suggested response is to remake society to remove (and prohibit) this type of pressure. Whether she admits it or not, this conflicts with “freedom of speech.” But so do most anti-discrimination and anti-group defamation laws (the latter have not been generally implemented in the United States). That doesn’t meet we must implement Dworkins’ vision to avoid hypocrisy. But I think it is valuable to notice the trade-off we are making. To use economic language, one might call the gendered norms an opportunity cost of arranging society the way we have.
And if the referenced norms seem wrong to you, then you ought not to think of Dworkin as an idiot. Feel free to continue thinking badly of Mary Daly (with my blessing and encouragement).
I don’t follow. Dworkin criticises something stupid, that doesn’t make ver not an idiot.
Dworkin is from the school of thought that helped us notice those particular costs of the setup. If post-modern thought doesn’t appear, we might not notice any of the problems it identified.
I suggest that post-modern thought looks foolish now because more mainstream thought appropriated and applied most of its greatest insights. What “remains” of post-modern thought is much less insightful.