Sex, Culture, and Justice: The Limits of Choice (15 page)

1. Richard Rorty,
   Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity,
   189.
   

46. Ibid., 73. 47. Ibid., 198.

1. Ibid.
   

   salize those values. Indeed, on Rorty’s account one can scarcely be a liberal without this desire.
   49
   

   If liberals wish to universalize their values of freedom and equality, it is natural to ask why that wish should be respected. In other words, are there any grounds for liberalism? Rorty fundamentally rejects any answer that claims to be ‘‘basic’’ or to rest on some sort of objective reason; for him, there simply cannot be any noncircular reason other than that liberal values form part of our final vocabulary.
   50
   While it may be true that there can be no neutral or objective answer about ultimate ends, there nevertheless can be arguments that are more or less likely to convince. In other words, there can be good—even if not decisive— arguments for using liberalism as the standard for judging other re- gimes. Many such arguments are based on extolling the considerable virtues of liberal autonomy and equality per se: their contribution to human flourishing, to rationality and progress, and so on. But beyond these arguments lies a more general justification for liberalism: even a comprehensive, nonpolitical liberalism is the best way to accommodate difference. Universal liberalism actually allows individuals to make their own choices about their way of life, as free as possible from coer- cion and injustice. These choices are no longer used as legitimators of unjust outcomes or social structures, and so the paradox of using so- cially constructed choices to legitimate that which constructed them disappears. Instead, choice is used as a way for individuals to deter- mine what sort of life they wish to lead, from an array of options that do not compromise their equality or well-being. A liberal state that forces a cultural group, for example, to allow its members to be fully autonomous and equal allows for more value-pluralism at the level of the individual than does a state that allows cultural groups to impose themselves on individuals within the group. And, as Nussbaum rightly argues: ‘‘The central question of politics should not be, How is the organic whole doing? but rather, How are X and Y and Z and Q doing?’’
   51
   As such, those liberals who are wary of asserting the univer- sal applicability of liberalism out of deference to freedom of choice and diversity are misguided. For to allow other groups to act illiberally by
   

2. Michael Bacon argues that Rorty is as much a liberal universalist as Brian Barry, discussed in Chapter 4. See Bacon, ‘‘Liberal Universalism.’’
   

3. Rorty,
   Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity,
   xv, 51, 197.
   

4. Martha Nussbaum,
   Sex and Social Justice
   , 62.
   

   imposing their norms is precisely to allow those groups to prevent the freedom of choice and diversity of their members.
   

   Difference
   

   This conclusion brings us to a further major issue arising from an attempt to use accounts of social construction to illuminate feminism and liberalism: difference. The idea of social construction lends sup- port to the claim of ‘‘cultural’’ feminists that there is a tendency in normative theory to privilege the perspective of the powerful. In femi- nism, this tendency is evident when white, middle-class, heterosexual Western women claim to speak for women as a whole, ignoring the different perspectives and oppressions of poor or lesbian women, and women from ethnic minorities or other cultures. According to cultural feminists, feminists (and normative theorists more generally) must pay more attention, and make more concessions, to difference if they are to avoid this form of cultural imperialism. The question of how to do so is a complex and involved one, and I devote much of Part Two to discussing different liberal approaches to difference. In the rest of this chapter I outline two feminist approaches, each of which attempts to combine feminist normative claims with an awareness of social con- struction.
   

   Young and the Politics of Difference
   

   Iris Marion Young is a prominent advocate of the moral relevance of difference, and of a combination of liberal normative concerns with ideas of social construction. Young sees her approach as following ‘‘the spirit of critical theory,’’ and as drawing on ideas from liberalism, femi- nism, and communitarianism (among others) while also criticizing as- pects of those approaches.
   52
   In liberal spirit she argues that there are two universal values that must be realized for the good life, values which presuppose that humans have equal moral worth. These values are, first, ‘‘developing and exercising one’s capacities and expressing one’s experience’’ and, second, ‘‘participating in determining one’s ac- tion and the conditions of one’s action.’’
   53
   Young emphasizes, however,
   

5. Iris Marion Young, ‘‘Reply to Tebble,’’ 282–83.
   

6. Young,
   Justice and the Politics of Difference
   , 37.
   

that justice consists in securing only the institutional conditions for realization of the good life, not the good life itself.

However, Young is also highly critical of many aspects of liberalism. Her first criticism is that liberalism focuses too much on redistribution of goods, failing to notice that domination and oppression are in fact the main barriers to justice. Domination is defined as ‘‘structural or systemic phenomena which exclude people from participating in deter- mining their actions or the conditions of their actions’’;
54
it is therefore by definition the main threat to Young’s second universal value, auton- omy. In
Inclusion and Democracy,
Young refers to domination as the opposite of self-determination.
55
Young defines oppression as ‘‘system- atic institutional processes which prevent some people from learning and using satisfying and expansive skills in socially recognized set- tings, or institutionalized social processes which inhibit people’s ability to play and communicate with others or to express their feelings and perspective on social life in contexts where others can listen.’’
56
Else- where, she defines oppression more concisely as the opposite of self- development.
57
Oppression and domination clearly must be overcome wherever possible. However, in her discussion of the politics of differ- ence, Young draws some problematic conclusions from this basic idea. Young argues that a just state is one that follows the ‘‘politics of difference’’ rather than the ‘‘ideal of assimilation.’’ According to the politics of difference, equality ‘‘sometimes requires different treatment for oppressed or disadvantaged groups’’;
58
following the ideal of assimi- lation, however, requires ‘‘treating everyone according to the same principles, rules and standards’’
59
and ‘‘the transcendence of group dif- ference.’’
60
However,
contra
Young, the difference between the politics of difference and the ideal of assimilation is not that clear. We could treat disadvantaged groups differently as a means to transcending group difference, and could even do so in a manner that treated every- one according to the ‘‘same principles.’’ For example, affirmative action policies treat applicants from ethnic minorities and applicants from

54. Ibid., 31.

1. Iris Marion Young,
   Inclusion and Democracy,
   32.
   

2. Young,
   Justice and the Politics of Difference
   , 38.
   

3. Young,
   Inclusion and Democracy,
   31–32.
   

4. Young,
   Justice and the Politics of Difference
   , 158.
   

5. Ibid.
   

60. Ibid., 157.

the white majority differently. However, the aim is to remove the disad- vantages associated with ethnicity and thus to transcend difference; and moreover, all applicants could be said to be treated according to the same principle if that principle were something like ‘‘positions should be allocated according to some combination of talent and com- pensation for past injustice or a deprived background.’’

The distinguishing feature of the politics of difference, then, is its aim to avoid the transcendence of difference. Young gives two sets of reasons for this aim. The first set of reasons is to do with bias: an ideal of assimilation is likely to represent the position of a privileged group that does not recognize its own particularity. However, Young recog- nizes that there could be an ideal of assimilation that recognized the risk of bias in attempts to formulate ‘‘universal’’ values and ‘‘impartial’’ institutions, and actively tried to create genuinely fair institutions. This is the aim of my approach: to recognize existing forms of inequality, injustice, and bias (especially gender bias), and to develop a universal approach that minimizes that injustice. Young argues, however, that even this kind of approach, which she calls ‘‘transformational assimila- tionism,’’ pays insufficient attention to difference. Transformational as- similationism, Young states, ‘‘denies that group difference can be posi- tive and desirable,’’
61
and thus remains inferior to the politics of difference. Young recognizes that universal approaches do not aim to remove all group differences or diversity; but for Young, this is not enough: we need ‘‘a politics that asserts the positivity of group differ- ence.’’
62

The sort of positive recognition of difference that Young has in mind entails two things that, she argues, transformational assimilationism cannot adequately realize: group autonomy in the political sphere and group affirmation. As regards the first, Young argues that the pluralism that liberalism endorses is insufficient because it is confined to the private sphere. Political liberalism, for example, which provides univer- sal political rights but allows people to follow their own conception of the good outside the political realm, effectively relegates group identi- ties to the private sphere and thus excludes minority groups from the public sphere of discussion and consideration. Instead, Young claims, her approach ‘‘acknowledges and affirms the public and political sig-

61. Ibid., 166.

62. Ibid.

nificance of social group differences as a means of ensuring the partici- pation and inclusion of everyone in social and political institutions.’’
63
Only in this way, for Young, can the oppression perpetuated by appar- ently ‘neutral’ state action be eliminated.

This claim is, on the face of it, very similar to one of my claims. Group differences must have public and political significance, and not be confined to the private sphere, because group identity is an impor- tant determinant of individuals’ experience and so must be taken into account when framing political institutions. Gender is a paradigmatic example of a group difference that affects individuals’ access to goods, status, and other values such as power and autonomy; culture is an- other. It is therefore crucial to take the effects of group membership into account, and not to focus on individuals at the expense of noticing and countering group-based injustice or inequality. As MacKinnon ar- gues, liberalism’s focus on the individual means that it tends to miss ‘‘the inherent group basis of equality claims’’ essential to feminist anal- ysis.
64

The question, then, is not whether groups make a difference to indi- viduals, or whether some harms suffered by individuals can be under- stood only by reference to their group membership. The question, rather, is how to deal with group-based inequalities, and how to deal with inequalities
within
groups. Young’s focus is on inequalities be- tween groups: on the ways in which certain groups are cast as other than, and thus inferior to, the dominant (white, heterosexual, middle- class) liberal majority. She concludes, as a result, that group difference must enter into the public sphere as a means of
strengthening
that dif- ference: group rights are important, Young states, ‘‘because they en- force the group’s autonomy and protect its interests as an oppressed minority.’’
65
This approach is better suited to gender, and other cases where group members as a whole suffer oppression. We might want to protect women’s interests as an oppressed group by according spe- cial rights to women: perhaps affirmative action policies in certain in- dustries or in politics, or rights that could apply to all but will in prac-

63. Ibid., 168.

1. MacKinnon, ‘‘‘The Case’ Responds,’’ 710. MacKinnon also points out on the same page that ‘‘women who sue one at a time for sex discrimination are suing for harm to them as women, not for harm to them as individuals: They are suing as members of their group, for injury to themselves in their capacity as group members, that is, on the basis of sex.’’
   

2. Young,
   Justice and the Politics of Difference
   , 183.
   

   tice most benefit women, such as a wage for caring work or special protections for victims of rape who testify in court.
   

   Protection of the interests of an oppressed group can be compatible with an emancipatory feminist project, then. The notion of ‘‘group au- tonomy,’’ however, is more problematic. Inasmuch as group autonomy is about enabling a group to resist oppression, it is entirely compatible with the transformational assimilationism that Young rejects—for such assimilation is entirely compatible with diversity that does not undermine individual equality and autonomy. If, on the other hand,
   group
   autonomy is meant to be distinguished from
   individual
   auton- omy, so that Young wants to allow groups to determine their own af- fairs and the condition of their members immune from liberal state interference, then it runs counter to liberal accounts of equality and justice. This kind of group autonomy applies more naturally to cultural or religious groups; and as I argue throughout, many such groups use that autonomy to limit the rights of their members, and may claim to do so to secure the survival of the group—or more accurately, the sur- vival of certain of the group’s norms.
   66
   Allowing groups to be autono- mous in this second sense, then, runs counter to justice. Group auton- omy must not override the autonomy of the individuals within the group, and must not contradict the basic liberal rights that the state guarantees. In her later work, Young recognizes this problem and counsels against reducing the ‘‘politics of difference’’ to ‘‘identity poli- tics.’’
   67
   It is important nonetheless to bear in mind the dangers of ‘‘group autonomy,’’ given the fact of internal group difference.
   

   The second element of Young’s politics of difference is the affirma- tion of group difference. We need, Young claims, group-conscious poli- cies that do more than protect a group from oppression. Instead, such policies need to ‘‘affirm the solidarity of groups,’’ and to ensure that ‘‘their specific experience, culture, and social contributions are publicly affirmed and recognized.’’
   68
   In other words, it is the task of the state to entrench group difference and, moreover, actively to praise the ways in which groups are different from each other. But the question of pub- licly recognizing and affirming group culture and experiences is prob- lematic. First, it conflicts with another aspect of Young’s work. Young
   

3. See also Okin, ‘‘Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?’’
   

4. Young,
   Inclusion and Democracy,
   89.
   

5. Young,
   Justice and the Politics of Difference
   , 174.