Unfortunately, I still haven't worked out what to make of my recent discoveries. Is it wrong for me to lose respect for these female friends, when the situation is certainly collaborative between them and their men? Should I lose just as much respect for these male friends?
These kinds of questions are often at the front of my mind. It’s interesting, because it isn’t a matter of what your friends should do or how they should feel (neither of which you can control), but what you should do or what you should feel. There’s no obligation to lose respect for another person, or at least, I cannot think of one. On the other hand, we find ourselves naturally having no respect for certain persons and would prefer not to feel guilty about it all. I think the answer has something to do with Sim’s take on emotion. To me, mysogyny is emotion. More than a belief about the capacity of men and women, it is a feeling about men and women. If it were otherwise, the question of whether the mysogynists are right would be purely scientific. As it is, it is a moral question. How should I feel about women? How should I about these particular women who seem so dependent on men?
One answer that might come to mind is that these are just emotions, and I don't have complete control over my emotions. If I find out a man beats his wife, I lose respect for him. I made no choice to do so. It just happened. This might be the best defense mysogyny has, and it is probably the main reason we are all convinced that something is wrong with the way Sim is thinking. We might not have a consensus on what specifically is wrong, but we all know there's something wrong.
But I do have some control over my emotions. I could work myself into a kind of hatred for him or maybe a sadness or maybe an cold, indifferent dislike. I might focus more on compassion for the wife, etc....
The common meaning of "an overly emotional person" is one who has little control over hir emotions. This should be recognized as distinct from suppressing emotion. Suppressing emotion seems to be an exclusion of real feelings from awareness, where controlling emotions works on a more fundamental level, not allowing the feelings to be real at all. I honestly don't know how this fits into psychoanalysis, but it seems to be the usage for other circles.
This is, I think, what Sim means when he talks about emotion, and I think there may be a point to thinking of it as inferior. It seems necessary to have some control over one's emotions to have attributes like moral courage, reasoning, and the like. These attributes need no less emotion than their respective defects. In fact, they probably require more emotion in some sense. Great courage means also great desire.
So if it is appropriate to ask how I should feel about other people, perhaps the best way to begin is with some ideal, like, "I ought to feel complete love and respect for all people." Recognizing that this is especially difficult if not impossible, we could come up with some curve that approaches that, like "whenever I cannot feel complete love and respect for this individual, I will pick the alternative that most closely approximates that." We don't have to worry about how this could hurt the relationship between two people (making one less powerful than the other), because that kind of thing depends mostly on the actions that are taken, and an action is not determined by the emotion of the actor.
I think I can finally get to the mysoginist. The mysoginist making a pseudo-reasoned argument will say something like
1. "women are overly emotional creatures"
2. "I shouldn't like overly emotional creatures."
therefore,
3. "I shouldn't like women." The principle of picking the most respectful and loving emotion for other people (including, of course, women) suggests that 2 is false. 1 is for the scientists to figure out, but it seems false in general.
So if I shouldn't be a mysogynyst, how should I respond to them? |
