Oppression, Hurt, and Feminist Philosophy
In some ways, our understanding of oppression is carefully tied to the idea of hurt. This connection is very clear in feminist philosophy—not solely do feminist philosophers recurrently analyze oppression’s bodily, materials, psychological, and social harms, however they usually argue that hurt is a constitutive function of oppression.
As an illustration, in Analyzing Oppression, Ann Cudd consists of hurt in her set of circumstances that have to be glad for one thing to depend as oppression, defining oppression itself as an “institutionally structured hurt” (26). Marilyn Frye equally argues that, to get clear about what oppression is (and what it isn’t), we should decide which harms represent components of oppression.
Consequently, the idea of hurt seems recurrently in feminist work on a spread of matters related to oppression. To call only a few examples, Christina Friedlaender presents a taxonomy of hurt of their evaluation of microaggressions, Miranda Fricker discusses the harms of each testimonial and hermeneutical injustice, Iris Marion Young engages with the harms of structural injustice, and several theorists talk about the harms ensuing from objectification.
Although hurt clearly performs a central function in feminist theorizing on oppression, there’s been little-to-no dialogue of what precisely is supposed by “hurt” in these contexts. This wouldn’t be an issue if hurt have been a easy, uncontroversial idea the place intuitive notions alone would suffice. However hurt is just not such a easy idea, and there are sometimes vital disagreements about what counts as hurt. Consequently, counting on intuitive notions of hurt could make analyses extremely prone to biases, inconsistencies, and different inaccuracies. Feminists, particularly, ought to reject such a reliance, as it could result in understandings of hurt that middle privileged social areas (provided that the harms skilled solely by these in marginalized social positions is probably not as simply acknowledged or understood by others).
As well as, feminist work usually goals to push again in opposition to sure social norms or practices to reveal how broadly accepted behaviors—behaviors that some won’t intuitively acknowledge as dangerous—the truth is produce serious harms. In discussing gender-based oppression, for instance, Catherine MacKinnon explains how “if [we] look neutrally on the fact of gender so produced, the hurt that has been performed won’t be perceptible as hurt. It turns into simply the way in which issues are” (59). Based mostly on this, I argue it is very important make clear our understanding of hurt itself if we’re to successfully make use of the idea in feminist theorizing about oppression.
Philosophy of Hurt
The philosophical work on hurt seems to be a pure place to show for clarification. But even inside this literature, there’s nonetheless substantial disagreement as to how hurt needs to be understood. Amongst different issues, debates come up concerning whether or not hurt is greatest outlined in a comparative or non-comparative sense, whether or not it needs to be seen as a state or an event, and even whether or not we should always retain a philosophical idea of hurt to start with.
For feminist philosophers, a bigger drawback with present accounts of hurt might lie outdoors of those debates. As Shannon Dea notes, commonplace or mainstream philosophical views of hurt are sometimes “extremely idealized” (304), that means theorists have historically relied on simplified or abstracted circumstances when growing accounts. Consequently, “a lot of the literature on hurt has proceeded by means of thought experiments and toy examples, and divulges little or no consciousness of or concern for acute actual world harms” (304). Specifically, by ignoring non-ideal circumstances, these accounts usually abstract away from social components like structural injustice, domination, coercion, and exploitation.
On condition that feminist philosophers view brokers as socially embedded and impacted by these very components, an apparent query arises: in statements of ‘x harms S,’ does it matter who S is in a socially embedded sense? In different phrases, is an individual’s social location (consisting of social id components comparable to race, gender, class, sexuality, and so forth., in addition to social relations and roles affected by these identities) related to our understanding of hurt?
Social Location and Hurt
To start answering this query, let’s first have a look at how social location would possibly have an effect on hurt on the particular person degree. These are the harms that commonplace accounts are likely to focus on completely, and the influence of social and systemic components is much less apparent at this degree than at that of group or collective hurt. I argue, nonetheless, that even on the particular person degree, evaluation of social location is commonly wanted for an appropriate principle of hurt. To get a way of why that is the case, we are able to have a look at a standard instance used within the hurt scholarship: incapacity.
As Dea explains, philosophers usually “draw on numerous kinds of incapacity because the go-to instance of a hypothetical hurt” (204). But, advocates of a social mannequin of incapacity have lengthy argued that social factors enormously influence the existence or severity of harms related to incapacity. Sara Goering, as an illustration, explains that “for many individuals with disabilities, the principle drawback they expertise doesn’t stem immediately from their our bodies, however slightly from their unwelcome reception on the earth, when it comes to how bodily buildings, institutional norms, and social attitudes exclude and/or denigrate them” (134).
To supply an instance, think about that two individuals, A and B, each turn into blind. A has entry to assistive know-how, accessible public companies, and lives in a society the place incapacity is just not stigmatized. B, nonetheless, lives in a society with no accessibility, no related know-how, and vital stigma. These components will all result in dramatically completely different experiences of blindness for A and B—though B probably experiences vital hurt, A is probably not harmed in any respect in advantage of turning into blind.
Incapacity, due to this fact, appears to be a transparent instance of social location’s relevance to hurt, even on the particular person degree. The issue, nonetheless, is {that a} extremely idealized view of hurt usually obscures the methods by which social and systemic components are relevant. This undermines the accuracy of hurt accounts when utilized to those that fall outdoors of the idealized focus. For instance, in discussing blindness, Matthew Hanser lists sight as a fundamental good for human beings—the lack of which constitutes a non-derivative hurt. Elizabeth Harman, too, makes use of blindness for instance of a non-comparatively dangerous state, and Judith Jarvis Thomson states {that a} human being who’s blind “fares merely badly” (438), claiming that any acceptable evaluation of hurt ought to yield that one is harmed if they’re triggered to be blind, as “a sighted particular person leads a thicker, richer life than a blind particular person does, and due to this fact will get extra out of residing” (452).
Right here we are able to see the impacts of an idealized strategy in apply. As Friedlaender argues, in lots of instances the non-ideal options being put apart are so basic to our understanding that they will’t be reintroduced afterward. Consequently, the strategy leaves us with accounts of hurt which are usually not relevant in complicated, real-world cases.
Implications for Feminist Theorizing
By ignoring non-ideal social circumstances, present theories of hurt are due to this fact liable to inaccuracies. This can be a drawback for analyses of hurt generally. Nevertheless, it poses a specific drawback for feminist work. As famous earlier, feminist theorists usually enchantment to hurt when analyzing oppression in a spread of domains. Normal theories of hurt create a number of points for these goals particularly.
First, the identification of oppressive harms requires an evaluation of social location. As an illustration, Cudd argues that the harms related to oppression are at all times wrongs—“to make a declare of oppression is to point out that the harms concerned are unjustified” (23). Nevertheless, not all harms are wrongs—for instance, I could hurt somebody whereas performing in self-defense with out wronging them—and figuring out whether or not a given hurt constitutes a incorrect usually requires attending to the very components that commonplace accounts neglect.
Taking an instance from Young, if somebody’s condominium utility is rejected as a result of they didn’t adjust to a regular landlord down fee coverage, we could also be inclined to say they’re harmed however not essentially wronged. It’s solely after we start wanting on the particular person’s social location (or their “social-structural” place as per Younger) and the assorted social components that make them unable to conform (e.g., rising value of housing, sex-segregated labor markets, structural inequities in schooling) that we see this for instance of injustice constitutive of oppressive hurt.
As well as, many harms of concern to feminists happen on the group degree itself, provided that oppression is primarily a gaggle phenomenon. Nevertheless, one other implication of an idealized strategy is that commonplace views usually wrestle to account for a notion of group hurt. Thomas Simon explains how a technique group hurt can happen is when “the hurt directed in opposition to a member of the group lowers the edge of vulnerability for different group members” (133). But, hurt theorists usually overlook the truth that individuals might turn into extra weak to hurt attributable to non-ideal social circumstances.
As an alternative, when discussing variations in hurt susceptibility, they primarily think about instances like somebody with a extreme worry of blinking, or somebody distressed over carpet lint. Consequently, many view heightened vulnerability to hurt as one thing that may be ignored. To supply some examples, Joel Feinberg argues that it is just the particular person of regular vulnerability whose pursuits are to be protected, as “if a sneeze causes a glass window to interrupt, we should always blame the weak point or brittleness of the glass and never the sneeze” (50). Thomson equally argues that hurt to these extra weak needs to be allotted “much less weight in accordance as it’s triggered solely to these of irregular susceptibility” (387). By focusing solely on “regular” susceptibility, then, commonplace theories essentially neglect the modifications in vulnerability required for figuring out the type of interconnected group-level hurt that’s typical of oppression.
These points reveal the extent to which the present hurt literature is ill-equipped to assist feminist theorizing on oppression. Nevertheless, I argue that explicitly connecting using very best principle methodology to the issues inside this scholarship highlights a brand new set of prospects for understanding hurt in a non-idealized sense.
Towards a Feminist Account of Hurt
What precisely such an account ought to appear to be, nonetheless, is a separate query. In what follows, I intention to current an alternate view of hurt that feminists would possibly enchantment to—one which ties hurt to antagonistic impacts on well-being, the place well-being is known in a relational sense.
To inspire this view, first notice that feminist issues surrounding hurt are carefully tied to a widespread curiosity within the well-being of sure teams. Feminists usually make comparative claims about how effectively the lives of these in numerous social positions go, and requirements of excellent relationships, in addition to private and group flourishing, are common features of feminist theorizing. In some ways, then, feminist work on oppression (whereby the idea of hurt abounds) is rooted in a basic concern about well-being.
This focus will be additional justified by interesting to the prevailing hurt literature, the place well-being is itself an implicit or underlying function of many commonplace accounts. In recent work, Jens Johansson and Olle Risberg draw on this perception to argue that commonplace theories largely don’t take critically sufficient the centrality of well-being to our understanding of hurt. Extra particularly, they argue that deviations from a concentrate on well-being (e.g., viewing hurt in relation to pursuits or autonomy) have led to problematic accounts of hurt, and that centering our understanding of hurt round detrimental impacts on well-being offers a legit account in its personal proper.
Nevertheless, Johansson and Risberg don’t embrace any definition of well-being of their account. In an effort to make sure that a novel principle of hurt addresses related non-ideal circumstances, I intention to supply a selected view of how well-being needs to be understood.
Although well-being is a central idea in philosophy, it too is canonically understood as extremely individualistic and idealized. As feminist theorists have lengthy pointed out, this conventional view is insufficient on the subject of addressing the influence that social and systemic components usually have on well-being. As such, a feminist view of well-being looks as if a much more appropriate basis for a principle of hurt that caters to feminist theorizing.
One main function of feminist accounts of well-being is their concentrate on a relational view of the self, or what Charlotte Knowles describes as “an image of the self that entails a recognition of its socially embedded nature” (70). In drawing on the umbrella of relational theory, these approaches focus each on understanding the impacts of non-public relationships and the broader social and structural relations of which they’re an element.
Based mostly on this, I outline hurt when it comes to antagonistic impacts on relational well-being. Amongst different issues, such a definition may clarify why social location is necessary to analyses of hurt, drawing consideration to the methods by which numerous private, social, and structural relations can influence well-being at each the person and group ranges.
For instance, when taking a look at incapacity, a relational view of hurt would require us to think about people’ entry to accessible companies, assets, and social helps—all of that are influenced by societal attitudes and institutional buildings. Equally, within the context of group well-being, a relational lens helps us to establish the interconnected nature of vulnerability, explaining why hurt to at least one member of a gaggle can hurt others as effectively.
Although way more work is required to develop this concept, my hope is that adopting a relational view of well-being on which to construct a brand new account of hurt would possibly present feminists with a extra appropriate basis for analyzing the harms related to oppression.
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Clair Baleshta
Clair Baleshta (she/her) is a PhD scholar within the Department of Philosophy at Western College. She obtained her undergraduate diploma in Data Integration from the College of Waterloo, minoring in Philosophy and Arithmetic, and her MA in Philosophy from the College of Guelph. She makes a speciality of feminist philosophy, bioethics, and AI ethics. Her present analysis focuses on growing a feminist account of hurt discount, a part of which entails figuring out how ‘hurt’ itself needs to be understood on this context.
