3. Fiction, Culture and the Concept of a Person
3.4. A Probable Objection
Following Wiredu, a friend of the communitarian and normative conception of personhood may contend it is not just gender-specific rules of behaviour that individuals are expected to conform to; instead, it is the ‘Golden Rule, supplemented with the customs governing behaviour in a given society or culture’ (Wiredu 2009:15, emphasis added).79
If a non-gendered principle like the Golden Rule provides the standard conformity to which enables the individual to be assessed on whether or not the individual attains personhood then my argument falls away. However, we should not be persuaded by this line of objection. First, it should be kept in mind that that although a non-gendered criterion is introduced, the gendered ones are not thereby eliminated. And we must not downplay the important role that the cultural expectation to satisfy gender-specific norms of behaviour plays in the attainment of normative personhood. In other words, normative personhood is still a deeply gendered phenomenon even if we include the additional non- gendered benchmark for assessing whether an individual attains personhood. So, we must examine the implications of gendered personhood and how they impact on the purposes for which the non-gendered criterion is introduced.
I have argued in Chapter Two that gender as a social category not only reveals inequalities in terms of individual access to social capital, like power, but also that it is an important tool for social domination of members of a particular gender group––more specifically women. In addition, I argued there that the available objections against this conclusion emerging from gender theorists working in Africa do not succeed. I do not wish to rehearse
79See also Wiredu (1992a) for Wiredu’s discussion of the Golden Rule under his idea of the principle of morality emerging from Akan traditional culture––a principle he describes as sympathetic impartiality.
those points here. Instead, I wish merely point out when those points are read in tandem with the conclusion reached in this chapter that normative personhood is fundamentally gendered, we begin to arrive at a response to the probable objection under consideration.
Consider the following claims:
1. The communitarian and normative view is a conception of personhood as social achievement;
2. Communitarian and normative personhood is a fundamentally gendered phenomenon;
3. Gender as a social category is a basis for social domination and unequal treatment;
4. More specifically, the hierarchical nature of gender relations is reflected in the inferior positions of women as a group in relation to men;
5. Consequently (i.e. inferring from 3 and 4), social achievements by men are generally superior to the achievements of women.
6. Given 1, 2 and 5, it follows that female-personhood is generally inferior to male- personhood.
I submit that inequality of male and female personhood is a corollary of the gendered nature of communitarian and normative conception of personhood. The point is that even if there is a non-gendered basis for normative personhood, it is important to note that it is not a sufficient condition for personhood; it is only a necessary condition. That is, satisfying that condition by itself doesn’t guaranteed personhood. This leaves the claim that personhood is a gendered phenomenon intact. But it also reveals something further: that
the personhood acquired by a member of subordinate gender group is inferior (in virtue of the individual belonging to that gender group) to the personhood acquired by an individual belonging to a superior gender group. To the extent that gender is constitutive of the communitarian and normative idea of personhood, and that the female gender is disadvantaged socially, to that extent female personhood is compromised vis-à-vis male personhood. This leads me to conclude that satisfying the additional non-gendered criterion does not undercut the force of my original objection that the communitarian and normative conception of personhood is gendered.80
Another way to approach the objection under scrutiny is to reflect on the question: which of the two broad sets of criteria is really doing the important work for the communitarian and normative conception of personhood? Is it the more general, non-gendered criterion?
Or is it the gender-specific cultural norms of behaviour? The question is even more pressing when we consider that the particular requirements and expectations of culture may not always be in agreement with universal principles of right conduct. Thad Metz has observed, and quite rightly I believe, that the Golden Rule’s requirement that an individual treat others as the individual would like to be treated may run contrary to the justifiable practice, for example, of imposing penalties on individuals for crimes committed. ‘After all’, Metz writes, ‘the golden rule would instruct a judge, when responding to an offender, to consider whether he would like to be punished (perhaps if he were in the offender’s shoes), and since virtually no judge would want to be punished himself, it appears
80I should note that although I focus on the Golden Rule, the considerations here would also apply to other universal, non-gendered principle of right behaviour. In addition, I should observe that my considerations apply as well to traditional African concepts of ‘respect’ as a moral principle, which ostensibly traverse the distinctions of gender.
invariably impermissible for a judge to penalize an offender’ (2007: 378).81 So, although most African cultures would sanction punishment against offenders, the Golden Rule would not.
What this reveals is that the requirements of a more general, non-gendered principle like the Golden Rule may sometimes be at odds with particular cultural practices. So, proponents of the communitarian and normative view must settle the question of which is fundamental: general principles or gender-specific cultural codes? If satisfying the requirements of a universal principle, like the Golden Rule, is all that matters for personhood, then it is unclear in what sense belonging to and being incorporated into this or that culture should matter at all. It would be unclear why fulfilling family and clan obligations is essential for personhood as Menkiti, Wiredu and other proponents of the communitarian and normative view claim. If satisfying the customs of particular cultures is all that matters, then the additional requirement to live up to universal principles of morality seems to fall away and, as such, the objection under consideration. If satisfying each sets of criteria matters equally for attaining personhood, then we return to my first response––the point that since communitarian and normative personhood is fundamentally gendered, in the sense of being situated within relations of hierarchy between men and women, then it seems to follow that even if personhood is acquired in virtue of meeting an additional, non-gendered criterion, the personhood of women would already be compromised by reason of their belonging to a specific gender group adjudged to be inferior to that of men.
81Thad Metz (2007b, especially 377–378) discusses this point in detail. See also his Beneficence as a Source of Meaning in Life in the World’s Major Religio-Philosophies (2013b), pp. 11–12.
Finally, we cannot rule out the argument that so-called universal, non-gendered principle of morality may in application be gendered. Here, as in the arguments in Chapter Two, the point is that there is always a gap between standards set by general principles and laws, on the one hand, and actual practices that characterize social reality, on the other. In this vein, Ntuli (2000) has argued strongly that hlonipha as a general principle of moral respect towards persons among the Ngunis is fundamentally gendered in the sense that men are expected to receive higher forms of respect than women. If this is the case, then merely suggesting that there are non-gendered criteria for assessing personhood may not be sufficient to show that communitarian and normative personhood is not a gendered phenomenon.