The harm principle - liberalism

[CocoaIsGone]

I thought it would be useful to highlight the so-called harm principle in liberal politics. Sorry I don’t have a better source than Wikipedia

[[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harm_principle harm principle]]

The point is that liberalism argues that ‘man’ is sovereign over ‘his’ body and autonomy aside from when it concerns others. There is nothing in liberal politics which supports self-identification at the expense of women’s rights and freedoms.

This is really a comment on the reply from Vince Cable to a poster on another thread. But it seems to me that the liberal position would be to support transgender rights, up to the point they do harm to non-transgender people. Hence I think it worth raising on its own thread.

The issue is evidencing where the harm lies, without denying support and accommodations to those who need it on the basis of gender dysphoria and intersex conditions.

However, the idea of self-identification beyond these conditions is predicated on the need to not be intrusive or impose intrusive medical and legal barriers on people who see themselves as trans. This is laudable, but not possible without dismantling existing protections for natal women which allow them to move freely in public space. You only need to look through history to recognise that same-sex bathroom space and changing space for sports has allowed women to participate socially and culturally, whilst same-sex support facilities provide much needed protective spaces for women experiencing intimate partner violence.

The question of the right to self-identification is problematic for liberals, or should be, therefore because of the harm principle. Therefore, it needs to be debated, not ignored.

[Gentlemanjohn]

Virtue ethics - it's the way to go.

www.rsrevision.com/Alevel/ethics/virtue_ethics/

[jellyfrizz]

OK john, can you analyse the debate on trans vs women's rights through the virtue ethics lens to demonstrate how this would work?

[makeourfuture]

yes, you CAN do what you want within legal parameters, but that leaves the question of what you SHOULD and SHOULD NOT do

Noted. Yes, I was reading an article recently on Lord Denning. His beliefs on contract were rooted strongly in the idea that people should do the right thing. If you promise to pay someone back, you do it.

[Gentlemanjohn]

What is the precise trans issue you would like me to discuss? I need a context.

[jellyfrizz]

Single sex spaces, as in the OP.

[DJBaggySmalls]

Women need and want women only spaces and women only staff.
Its not up to women who dont need them to let men in, and its not up to men to try to use them.
This is not up for debate.

[Gentlemanjohn]

If you mean men having gender reassignment surgery and then claiming they have a right to enter female toilets, ward, prisons and claiming they should be defined as women and not trans men - then I would say they are self-obsessed and narcissistic and are not giving thought to the feelings of the people like the vulnerable young girl in the toilets.

For Aristotle, terms are used to identify people on the basis of their 'telos' - what they do. So a knife exists to cut bread etc, and a good knife is one that is sharp. Being an ancient Greek male aristocrat, Aristotle would argue that the telos of a woman is to give birth and raise children. Obviously we don't go along with that, but we can still accept that a woman has certain qualities, functions and characteristics (a capacity for child-birth being the obvious example) that distinguish her from others. He would not be very pro-trans at all (but he wouldn't be very pro-feminist either).

However, many modern thinkers have attempted to update Aristotle's ethics, keeping the general principle while bringing it up to date with modern life. Even some feminists have come out in favour of Aristotle. Carol Gilligan is most notable. She argues that male power asserts itself in legalistic rights doctrines and rules, while the idea of cultivating virtuous habit and feelings provides is much more consonant with what she believes should be the aims of feminism.

[Gentlemanjohn]

So a good soldier is good at soldiering, a good baker is good at baking, and a good woman is good at doing what a woman is supposed to do - raise children. Yeah, that's not good I know - but it can be updated to confer on woman a status as woman within a more modern context in which she rightly has lots of freedoms that an ancient Athenian woman would not have had. I'm not sure what the 'telos' of a trans person would be?

More broadly though, it means there are good and bad people. The purpose of a person is what is called 'eudominaia' which is loosely translated as 'happiness' though it is very different from our concept of happiness which is basically the subjective experience of pleasure. It means someone flourishes as a person - is kind, magnanimous, generous, just, prudent, rational etc etc - while a bad person is mean, selfish, violent, intemperate, overly pleasure seeking etc etc.

You can update the list of vices to include misogyny, racism etc. They're not fixed. But what is universal is a certain good way for someone to THINK and FEEL and then they act virtuously in accordance.

As I say, this is not a liberal philosophy and there are problems with it. But the general principles work. -

[Gentlemanjohn]

Not saying I don't have sympathies for trans people, but all this new sexual identitarianism is postmodern liberal individualism going insane.

Totally agree with you lot on that.

[Gentlemanjohn]

The problem for feminism in terms of virtue ethics is that if the distinction between male and female is to be retained, those concepts would have to be defined in terms of telos. That is there are certain things more given for a woman to do than a man - look after children for example. I think the way round that is to insist that woman can exercise such a function within the private severe as well as making a contribution to the polis (society). The same goes for a man. Though there still would be broadly divergent concepts of what it means to be a man and a woman - different sets of ethical demands as well as shared ones.

A gender binary model in which a man is expected to adhere to a certain set of virtues (industriousness, honour, chivalry, respect for women) and a woman expected to adhere to hers (those pertaining to the nurture or care for children) is in some ways preferable to the current set up, which is everyone out for themselves and men trying to invent themselves as women, or becoming infantilised, whining, self-entitled children. From this perspective, Harvey Weinstein has failed terribly to be what a man should be. He is a bad man. He is not a REAL man. A person who believes in a gender neutral society would say he has been a bad person - no, he has specifically been a bad man. Real men do not behave in this despicable way.

So I would argue, controversially, that the feminist attempt to destabilise traditional concepts of gender identity has gone awry - leading them full circle to reassert womanhood in face of co-option by the trans community. Feminists argue that they only wish to retain biological sex as a basis for identity, not 'gender'. But I don't think you can fully separate someone's biology from their identity. They are not two different things.

Can there be a feminism which recognises men and women are different, but empowers women to hold men fully to account? Can there be a feminism which celebrates the capacity to give life and posits such a capacity within the context of a society of VIRTUES?

Liberalism. Individualism. It's failed horribly, and we all know it. Trans is just the last word in the consumer society, which reduces even identity to something you shop for in a marketplace - not something you DO in service of the common good.

[Gentlemanjohn]

I'll stop now. :)

[PricklyBall]

"Let's take prostitution. Whatever you think of it a woman could quite legitimately claim that she is experiencing no harm through making a free choice; and conversely the punter could say the same. According to Rawlsian logic, this transaction would be fine."

I think this is to misunderstand Rawls (or at least take a very small part of what he says out of context).

Remember what Rawls does is not just to defend individual rights (the old saw of "your right to swing your fist ends where my nose starts"), he is also engaged in the classical liberal endeavour of looking at what rules within a liberal society should look like (he's closer in spirit to a rule-utilitarian than an act-utilitarian). To this end, he proposes a thought experiment: his "initial position". Put a group of people in a room. They are told broadly about how society will function - economic exchanges, laws to ensure fair dealings with one another and minimise violence, laws which in some cases may restrict individual freedoms in exchange for maximising utility (okay, that's a kind of Mills-ian concept, but the point is that most classical liberals accept there have to be some laws, but they should be minimal and justified by limiting overall harm and maximising utility). The other thing the people know is that they will be born into this society unequal - they might have greater or lesser intellectual ability, physical strength, health, inherited wealth etc. etc. But - the crucial thing - they are in complete ignorance as to where in the hierarchy of these qualities they will end up.

So, in ignorance of whether you're born lucky or dealt a shitty hand in life - how do you set up society so the hard working get a chance to get on in life, but the unlucky aren't screwed? This is the central question Rawls poses.

I think it's therefore quite possible to envisage a statement of the initial position which includes stating the risks of sexual violence, the commodification of sexual acts in exchange for money (i.e. the blow-job for 5 quid in the gutter end of the market as opposed to the well-paid independent escort end), and the economic pressures which lead to trafficking a sexual slavery, which then asks the question "Which would be a more just society overall? One where the purchase of sex is criminalised, or one where it is legalised?" The group of people behind Rawls' "veil of ignorance" might well say "well, if I did end up a woman, or very poor and desperate young man, the odds are overwhelmingly that I'd end up at the 5 quid for a blow job end of the market, thus I would prefer to structure society so the purchase of sex was outlawed, in the interests of maximising utility to society as a whole."

Classical liberalism isn't just about individual rights, it's about setting up an agreed set of rules and laws for society as a whole - to think it's just about individual rights is to conflate liberalism and libertarianism.

[Gentlemanjohn]

Yes but questions of ethics always transcend rules. There are, and always will be, rules which it is right to BREAK in some circumstances.

You cannot subtract moral character from the issue of something like prostitution. You could, theoretically, have a very affluent society in which there is a well regulated sex industry governed by the very harm-reducing rules you refer to - but it still would not be right for someone to think they could buy someone for sexual pleasure IRRESPECTIVE of the harm done. Even if no harm were done at all, such entitlement would still be a wrong thing for a person to FEEL.

Of course there has to be rules, but their application should be as far as possible made on the basis of virtue and rice, not simply crude legalistic spirit rules of utility, freedom and harm.

Think about how we raise children: we don't tell them it's bad to lie or steal because they might get in trouble, or will impinge on someone else's freedom to do what they like. We say it shows a deficiency of moral character.

The best example is that of the guy who bets the month's earnings on a horse and wins. Did he act justly? No.

[Gentlemanjohn]

Rawls follows on from Mill in advancing a legalistic, doctrinal concept of ethics originating in the 18th century. It's basically a system of administrative rules applied to what would become capitalism. You cannot have homo economicus enraging in morally disengaged market transactions without such a system of rules - but because there is no concept of the good underlying capitalism other than a vague 'do what you want as long as you don't break the law' then the arbitrary laws which you must not break have no moral validity beyond the fact that you must not break them. Are the rules just? How would you know? On the basis of whether they cause harm? What's harm? Where does one person's right end and another begins?

It's a mess...

[Gentlemanjohn]

Though even liberal 18th century thinkers like Adam Smith believed 'moral sentiment' should inform economic transactions - by the time you get to rules even that has kind of gone.

[Gentlemanjohn]

By the time you get to rules? Rawls I meant!

[jellyfrizz]

Feminists argue that they only wish to retain biological sex as a basis for identity, not 'gender'.

Uh, no. Biological sex is a category not an 'identity'. It's a biological fact about you, like your height. This may have an impact on your sense of self but is not an identity in the same way gender is.

[jellyfrizz]

The problem for feminism in terms of virtue ethics is that if the distinction between male and female is to be retained, those concepts would have to be defined in terms of telos.

No. Why would men and women need to defined as different in terms of ethics? This is the whole point, we don't need a gender binary. The difference between men and women is biological, not social or moral.

[Gentlemanjohn]

1. There is nothing about anyone which is strictly non-biological. Your brain is a biological organ. There no abstract 'thoughts' within it.And you cannot entirely divorce a woman's capacity for childbirth from her overall identity.
   
   
2. What I'm saying is that identity does not come from within - there is nothing inside of you. Nothing there at all. One's identity comes from what one does. If you are do a lot of good parenting, you're a good parent; if you do a lot of good art, you're a good artist. If you do a lot of raping, you're a rapist. If you do a lot of murdering, you're a murderer. And so on.
   
   But because people don't have clear roles within society - they have careers or jobs which give them money to consume - they have started to imagine identity as something that is assumed independent of what one does. It isn't.
   
   You are what you do, and nothing else.

[DJBaggySmalls]

So I would argue, controversially, that the feminist attempt to destabilise traditional concepts of gender identity has gone awry

Yes that would be a controversial argument to make. It only holds true if you believe gender or biological sex place you on a hierarchy.

[makeourfuture]

There is nothing about anyone which is strictly non-biological. Your brain is a biological organ. There no abstract 'thoughts' within it

Rust Cohle:

[Gentlemanjohn]

Yes that would be a controversial argument to make. It only holds true if you believe gender or biological sex place you on a hierarchy.

OK, but does a gender distinction have to be hierarchical?

You're gonna hate me here, but I don't mean this condescendingly; I just notice these things because I find gender politics fascinating.

On this forum for some time there has been a predominant focus on the trans issue. There are a billion and one issue affecting women but this gets top billing to the point where almost every other thread is related to trans stuff. And I do get why, as I'll explain. Furthermore, I've noticed more people on FWR making very essentialist statements unchallenged - stuff like 'women are innately kinder or more nurturing than men because they give birth' - the kind of stuff that would have had you shot to bits in fem circles in 1975. But suppose, for argument's sake, that they're right? Suppose men and women are different not just in terms of their reproductive CAPACITY or lack thereof, but are broadly different on a ore fundamental predispositionary level.

So, what I think (controversially) is that feminism has come full circle. What a lot feminists don't like (and justifiably) is men adopting the identity of women not just on the basis that women are different on a basic biological level, but because they don't like men appropriating their as gendered, female subjects.

Note: this is not meant to countenance bullshit to the affect of women can't do maths, but it is to say maybe you are more given to caring? Does that have to be a subordinate predisposition? Not necessarily anymore. As I say, men have lost a lot of their position in the world, but you still have yours - and you arguably want to defend it and keep it because in actual fact bringing people into the world and raising them is, in this post-industrial, (increasingly) post-patriarchal society when paid work is disappearing, an enormous source of power.

Discuss.

[Gentlemanjohn]

Typo meant to say:

'but because they don't like men appropriating their identity as gendered, female subjects.

[Gentlemanjohn]

And I'm not saying it's a bad source of power - in fact it's good.

Who has the better source of power ultimately? Someone who can create another human being or Harvey Weinstein? Weinstein is in ruins.

You have more power than he does in the end.

So in essence, the gender binary will remain but the power differential will shift - possibly reverse. And men want in on this power women have.

This is why, all of a sudden, in the 21st century, a load of men have decided they want to be women.

What d ya reckon?

[jellyfrizz]

Furthermore, I've noticed more people on FWR making very essentialist statements unchallenged - stuff like 'women are innately kinder or more nurturing than men because they give birth'

I haven't seen this. Can you link to some posts?