I take something like, "women have long hair," to be a straightforwardly true statement about the relative average/median/distribution of the hair of women. I think it's a bit uncharitable to ascribe in it an implicit directive about womanhood or an evaluative statement about all women.
Consider someone who says, "White people can't dance," and "Black people can't swim." Surely this person would not have their whole worldview shattered if you showed them a video of Fred Astaire or Simone Manuel. Also, this person is surely not implicitly saying, "true Blackness entails the inability to swim." The person is simply making general statments about differences in distributions across groups.
I take statements like, "men are pigs," and "women are emotional," to be straightforwardly true. Of course, I realize the title of this article includes the modifier *all*, which makes the statement straightforwardly false. However, since "women are emotional," I'll grant (on average) a little more latitude for exaggeration.
I should probably have been more clear that I think sexism relies on the speech act being performed. If by "women have long hair" you are performing the act of trying to assert a true descriptive statement, then I don't think it is sexist. But I think there are many cases where it can be very reasonably interpreted as a directive speech act instead, in which case I *would* think it sexist. For example if an otherwise often vocally sexist man says it to his daughter who has just gotten a buzz-cut, I think it would be very plausible to interpret it as a sexist Statement.
Likewise, I think it is very implausible that you should interpret "men are pigs" as trying to assert a true statement about the statistical correlation between belonging to the group of men and performing certain acts. Rather I think it is expressing a general distaste for a large group of people based on their belonging to that group. If not, then the speaker is certainly not very good at communicating clearly, especially when they (or others in the group) often follow it up with stuff like "I hate men" and "men are so disgusting".
Let "pigness" be the property of "(secretly) perceiving (some) other persons primarily as sex objects instead of as fellow human beings." Obviously I take "pigness" to occur only in contexts in which it's clear the person doesn't wish to be considered primarily as a sex object. Now I take it for granted both that many more men are pigs than women, and that there are enough straight male pigs such that their existence is a component of regular life for women.
Now suppose that by "men are pigs," a woman means: "I think there is a significant probability that a given man that I meet is a pig, and for this reason, all else equal, I would prefer to interact with a given woman than a given man."
I think this attitude clearly fits the definition of "sexism," in that it expresses a general distaste for a large group of people based on their belonging to that group. But I'm not sure such an attitude is morally blameworthy, particularly if the person has good reasons to think the probability of pigness is high (in reference to her), or perhaps if she has a large distaste for being secretly objectified.
I don't actually your explication counts as sexism under my definition. The way you explicated the statement crucially depends on a sort of statistical correlation between being a man and the trait of pigness, but I explicitly ruled that out as sexism. To count as sexism on my definition, it has to be merely do to the group membership, not some statistical correlation between the group membership and some negative trait.
But more importantly, I don't think your explication is a very plausible one of the statement in question. Again, we can take the statement "women are shrews". Let "shrewness" be the propensity to scold others for minor flaws, or something like that. Now suppose that there is a strong positive correlation between being a woman and possessing a large degree of shrewness. We can then reinterpret the statement "women are shrews" as: "I think there is a significant probability that a given woman I meet will have a propensity to comment on my flaws, and for this reason, all else equal, I would prefer to interact with a given man than with a given woman".
I think that the latter statement is plausibly not sexist, though probably wrongheaded. But it is also a very implausible interpretation of the statement. If I were to tell you "women are shrews" that would be very different from "I prefer not interacting with women because I am afraid they will pick out my flaws". The first is clearly sexist, while the second is not. And I think the reason is also clear: The first is attributing a negative quality to members of the group "women" *merely* because of their membership of that group, while the second is expressing a preference based on a perceived statistical correlation. There is a clear difference in the speech act performed with the two statements (at least to me), making the first sexist and the second not so clearly so. If by saying the first I was intending the second, I should at the *very* least be more careful with my wording.
I'm not sure my interpretation is so implausible, but your interpretation of general grievance is probably right more often. Also, perhaps some of the time the woman is communicating a sincere belief that pigness is entailed by maleness.
More generally, if we ignore the instances of miscommunication and only consider the carefully worded phrasings, are we sure our statments of general distaste for men/women because of the higher probability of prigness/shrewness are not instances of sexism?
Consider the analogous statement: "All else equal, I don't want any Black people in my neighborhood because of their higher propensity to commit crimes." This stikes me as an almost quintessential instance of racism. Yet under this framework, so long as the person would have no racial preference conditional on equal criminality, it wouldn't be racist.
I don't want to bore you too much with semantics, but this always struck me as puzzling, because there are only four possibilities:
(1) The statement is not actually racist (seems implausible given common usage)
(2) Some racist attitudes are not morally blameworthy (yikes)
(3) In some instances, it's morally blameworthy to desire a smaller probability of being the victim of a crime. (??)
(4) In some instances, it's morally blameworthy to form rational beliefs based on differences in distributions, even if the alternative entails your irrational holding of false beliefs. (Elieser not happy?)
My preferred solution is that maybe the term "racism" has suffered concept creep, so (2) has become true. It might also be that (4) is simply correct. What do you think?
I think it is certainly a hard case you have raised, although I think I would perhaps bite the bullet and say that it is in fact not racist (assuming racism mirrors sexism). Perhaps our ordinary usage of the word would count it as sexism, but then, as I have discussed previously, I don't think we should look at how words are actually used. And so if the statement really is "If I were to pick between a colored neighbor and a white neighbor, then because I believe that there is a positive correlation between being colored and being criminal, I would prefer a white neighbor, *all else being equal*". Although I will admit it does feel very wrong to say.
But I do think we can lighten the blow a little. I think part of the reason we would consider such an attitude blameworthy is because it is often accompanied by an attitude which is in fact bad. That is the attitude that you would still be more scared of your black neighbors even after having gotten to know them etc. This is a blameworthy attitude because it is based only on their being black at that point.
But if it is simply only based on a statistical correlation, then I think it would be equivalent to saying the same thing about poor neighbors, or neighbors from Tennessee, or some other group which is overrepresented in crime statistics.
And in any case it is probably not the type of thing you should go around saying, given the associations with it and what not.
It's certainly not racist to recognize correlations (e.g., average incomes across demographics), but it is racist to assign causation based on race. People are not more/less likely to commit crimes simply because of their race (obviously). As for what is rational, the most rational individual will leverage factors that actually drive criminality, not correlated attributes (e.g., race) without true cause/effect relationships.
So, I think there is a 5th possibility that Philip didn't mention:
(5) One should recognize that race is not the causal factor and seek to understand the true causes of criminality.
That said, desiring a "smaller probability of being the victim of a crime" may be rational from a perspective of self-preservation. But is it morally commendable? I believe great men take great risks to create change. Often we should spend time around "high-risk individuals" because we might just make a positive impact in their lives. And thereby, we might just make a positive impact in the world.
Lmao is written by a Republican in 2013? Yeah no shit, feminists hate men, and "antiracists" hate Whites. Great hot take, bud. You should join us in the year 2024. Next you're going to tell me that dEmOcRaTs ArE tHe ReAl RaCiStS.
I take something like, "women have long hair," to be a straightforwardly true statement about the relative average/median/distribution of the hair of women. I think it's a bit uncharitable to ascribe in it an implicit directive about womanhood or an evaluative statement about all women.
Consider someone who says, "White people can't dance," and "Black people can't swim." Surely this person would not have their whole worldview shattered if you showed them a video of Fred Astaire or Simone Manuel. Also, this person is surely not implicitly saying, "true Blackness entails the inability to swim." The person is simply making general statments about differences in distributions across groups.
I take statements like, "men are pigs," and "women are emotional," to be straightforwardly true. Of course, I realize the title of this article includes the modifier *all*, which makes the statement straightforwardly false. However, since "women are emotional," I'll grant (on average) a little more latitude for exaggeration.
I should probably have been more clear that I think sexism relies on the speech act being performed. If by "women have long hair" you are performing the act of trying to assert a true descriptive statement, then I don't think it is sexist. But I think there are many cases where it can be very reasonably interpreted as a directive speech act instead, in which case I *would* think it sexist. For example if an otherwise often vocally sexist man says it to his daughter who has just gotten a buzz-cut, I think it would be very plausible to interpret it as a sexist Statement.
Likewise, I think it is very implausible that you should interpret "men are pigs" as trying to assert a true statement about the statistical correlation between belonging to the group of men and performing certain acts. Rather I think it is expressing a general distaste for a large group of people based on their belonging to that group. If not, then the speaker is certainly not very good at communicating clearly, especially when they (or others in the group) often follow it up with stuff like "I hate men" and "men are so disgusting".
Consider the following steelman:
Let "pigness" be the property of "(secretly) perceiving (some) other persons primarily as sex objects instead of as fellow human beings." Obviously I take "pigness" to occur only in contexts in which it's clear the person doesn't wish to be considered primarily as a sex object. Now I take it for granted both that many more men are pigs than women, and that there are enough straight male pigs such that their existence is a component of regular life for women.
Now suppose that by "men are pigs," a woman means: "I think there is a significant probability that a given man that I meet is a pig, and for this reason, all else equal, I would prefer to interact with a given woman than a given man."
I think this attitude clearly fits the definition of "sexism," in that it expresses a general distaste for a large group of people based on their belonging to that group. But I'm not sure such an attitude is morally blameworthy, particularly if the person has good reasons to think the probability of pigness is high (in reference to her), or perhaps if she has a large distaste for being secretly objectified.
I don't actually your explication counts as sexism under my definition. The way you explicated the statement crucially depends on a sort of statistical correlation between being a man and the trait of pigness, but I explicitly ruled that out as sexism. To count as sexism on my definition, it has to be merely do to the group membership, not some statistical correlation between the group membership and some negative trait.
But more importantly, I don't think your explication is a very plausible one of the statement in question. Again, we can take the statement "women are shrews". Let "shrewness" be the propensity to scold others for minor flaws, or something like that. Now suppose that there is a strong positive correlation between being a woman and possessing a large degree of shrewness. We can then reinterpret the statement "women are shrews" as: "I think there is a significant probability that a given woman I meet will have a propensity to comment on my flaws, and for this reason, all else equal, I would prefer to interact with a given man than with a given woman".
I think that the latter statement is plausibly not sexist, though probably wrongheaded. But it is also a very implausible interpretation of the statement. If I were to tell you "women are shrews" that would be very different from "I prefer not interacting with women because I am afraid they will pick out my flaws". The first is clearly sexist, while the second is not. And I think the reason is also clear: The first is attributing a negative quality to members of the group "women" *merely* because of their membership of that group, while the second is expressing a preference based on a perceived statistical correlation. There is a clear difference in the speech act performed with the two statements (at least to me), making the first sexist and the second not so clearly so. If by saying the first I was intending the second, I should at the *very* least be more careful with my wording.
I'm not sure my interpretation is so implausible, but your interpretation of general grievance is probably right more often. Also, perhaps some of the time the woman is communicating a sincere belief that pigness is entailed by maleness.
More generally, if we ignore the instances of miscommunication and only consider the carefully worded phrasings, are we sure our statments of general distaste for men/women because of the higher probability of prigness/shrewness are not instances of sexism?
Consider the analogous statement: "All else equal, I don't want any Black people in my neighborhood because of their higher propensity to commit crimes." This stikes me as an almost quintessential instance of racism. Yet under this framework, so long as the person would have no racial preference conditional on equal criminality, it wouldn't be racist.
I don't want to bore you too much with semantics, but this always struck me as puzzling, because there are only four possibilities:
(1) The statement is not actually racist (seems implausible given common usage)
(2) Some racist attitudes are not morally blameworthy (yikes)
(3) In some instances, it's morally blameworthy to desire a smaller probability of being the victim of a crime. (??)
(4) In some instances, it's morally blameworthy to form rational beliefs based on differences in distributions, even if the alternative entails your irrational holding of false beliefs. (Elieser not happy?)
My preferred solution is that maybe the term "racism" has suffered concept creep, so (2) has become true. It might also be that (4) is simply correct. What do you think?
I think it is certainly a hard case you have raised, although I think I would perhaps bite the bullet and say that it is in fact not racist (assuming racism mirrors sexism). Perhaps our ordinary usage of the word would count it as sexism, but then, as I have discussed previously, I don't think we should look at how words are actually used. And so if the statement really is "If I were to pick between a colored neighbor and a white neighbor, then because I believe that there is a positive correlation between being colored and being criminal, I would prefer a white neighbor, *all else being equal*". Although I will admit it does feel very wrong to say.
But I do think we can lighten the blow a little. I think part of the reason we would consider such an attitude blameworthy is because it is often accompanied by an attitude which is in fact bad. That is the attitude that you would still be more scared of your black neighbors even after having gotten to know them etc. This is a blameworthy attitude because it is based only on their being black at that point.
But if it is simply only based on a statistical correlation, then I think it would be equivalent to saying the same thing about poor neighbors, or neighbors from Tennessee, or some other group which is overrepresented in crime statistics.
And in any case it is probably not the type of thing you should go around saying, given the associations with it and what not.
It's certainly not racist to recognize correlations (e.g., average incomes across demographics), but it is racist to assign causation based on race. People are not more/less likely to commit crimes simply because of their race (obviously). As for what is rational, the most rational individual will leverage factors that actually drive criminality, not correlated attributes (e.g., race) without true cause/effect relationships.
So, I think there is a 5th possibility that Philip didn't mention:
(5) One should recognize that race is not the causal factor and seek to understand the true causes of criminality.
That said, desiring a "smaller probability of being the victim of a crime" may be rational from a perspective of self-preservation. But is it morally commendable? I believe great men take great risks to create change. Often we should spend time around "high-risk individuals" because we might just make a positive impact in their lives. And thereby, we might just make a positive impact in the world.
Lmao is written by a Republican in 2013? Yeah no shit, feminists hate men, and "antiracists" hate Whites. Great hot take, bud. You should join us in the year 2024. Next you're going to tell me that dEmOcRaTs ArE tHe ReAl RaCiStS.