Are women human?
In the not-so-distant past, learned men debated whether women had a soul. It was known that all men had one — but women were fundamentally a different and lesser breed. Women lacked reason and self-control. Women could never acquire the noble attributes that men prided themselves on: sacrifice and stoicism and fraternal comradeship and so forth. Learned men looked at women and shook their heads and wondered.
Men made the laws. They enforced the customs. They molded the culture, wrote the books, got together over beers and came up with great pronouncements, spoke of mankind and of the rights of man and brotherhood and so forth, and they imprinted society with their beliefs. The viewpoint we all learn is the view that puts men as the standard — the default model — and women as the mutation.
(A friend of mine came over one night with her husband. They were both doctors, both Peruvian. As her husband and mine began talking eagerly about their soccer team, my friend laughed and said to me, “In my country, everyone plays soccer!” I answered, “Oh, so you play too?” but I had already guessed what she really meant. Just as I thought: she gave me a startled look and said, “Oh, no, of course not. It’s a game for men.”)
The woman-as-outlier model means that we don’t include women when we speak of human rights. Human rights and civil rights include such things as equality under the law, self-determination, freedom to speak one’s mind and generally run one’s life without fear of beatings or torture, and the right of autonomy over one’s body. But women must appeal for these same rights under a special banner, and plead their special case. “We know we are not human. We don’t deserve the human rights and respect that you men bestow on each other. But please, please, allow us special rights. Let us have women’s rights.”
Now: to the Trump crap.
When men criticize Trump for his words about women, they mostly say, “I have daughters. I have a wife. I wouldn’t want anyone talking disrespectfully about them or grabbing at them or threatening them.” (And those are the ones we call the ‘good’ men. The other men - millions of them, apparently - can be seen and heard at Trump rallies and on 4chan and on old Access Hollywood tapes.)
When women speak to men about Trump’s remarks, I often hear them use this same line. “How would you like it if it was your sister or daughter who was harassed, whose pussy was grabbed?” It seems that women have learned that this is the only way to get the average man to care about the human rights of women: one must hold up the special case of hey, I know you don’t give a fuck about females having rights as human beings — but what if a man attacked one of those specific women that you have personal protective feelings toward?
If women were human, it would be different. We wouldn’t be saying “A woman deserves respect because she could be your daughter, she could be your sister, she could be your wife.” We’d be saying, “She deserves respect because of course she does.”
Or rather, we wouldn’t be saying it because it would be ridiculously obvious, on the level of “water is wet.”
I heard some of Michelle Obama’s recent speech about Trump’s words. I mostly liked it. I appreciated that she made the effort. But there were parts I bristled at. She said Trump’s words were ‘hurtful’. She talked about all the females who were being ‘wounded’. It was an emotional appeal: <i>Don’t hurt our female feelings. Don’t crush some little girl’s dreams.<i> It struck me as the equivalent of “treat your black maid well; treat the nanny well; be nice; give a few coins to the homeless man. Those are people different from you — they are vulnerable, they are lesser, they are preyed upon, and they deserve kindness from on high.”
That’s a pretty crappy message in my opinion. I don’t want special pleading for womankind. “Treat women with respect because, just think how hurt and wounded she’ll be if you don’t” is no better than “Treat women with respect because every woman is some man’s daughter or wife.”
The only ethical viewpoint is, “Treat humans with respect because they’re human.”
Yup, even female humans.