It was recently suggested by an article in this paper (“Universities as social incubators,” November 2, 2014) that those who opposed a constitutional amendment at Trinity College aimed at abolishing a gender-segregated event were in support of a bigoted institution. Last week, at Christchurch College, Oxford, a civil debate on abortion ethics was cancelled amidst threats by a feminist group. Presently, some proponents of progressive politics are threatening our institutions’ vital liberal ethos.
Trinity students do not have a moral duty to abolish their gender-segregated meeting, nor is it appropriate to imply they are bigots for voting down the constitutional amendments; Christchurch students however, especially those responsible for interrupting the debate, certainly have a moral duty to respect the rights of their peers.
Progressives who are ostensibly “liberal” may have varying moral sensibilities. Some liberal values, such as the legal and social equality of persons irrespective of religion or gender identity, may be derived from various ethical camps. The way your sentiments align with one of these camps will determine how you interpret the Christchurch incident.
For example, if you are a deontologist and think that rights are intrinsically significant, then you will condemn the disruption of the debate. But if you are a utilitarian and believe that a little wrong can justify the promotion of social welfare, then you will applaud the disruption. After all, not only did the disruption draw international attention to the patriarchal structure of public discourse, it also prevented dubious arguments from swaying public opinion and reinforcing current power structures.
All parties in a dispute wish to sway opinions, but this brand of progressive politics seeks to prevent the “contamination” of the public from outside forces. These progressives would deny that they seek to prevent members of the community from exercising their rights and that they act only to bring about justice in their communities. For consequentialists, right actions are those that maximize welfare. Since the feminists at Oxford are maximizing welfare by squashing political freedoms, they are also acting rightly. Furthermore, they prevented the reduction in welfare that would have ensued had the debate occurred.
One has the suspicion that this community is narrower than it lets on. To exclude someone from the public square and deprive them of the rights you would expect for yourself is clearly to make an “other” of them. Once this is has occurred, the community stops respecting the dissenters’ rights of free speech and assembly, because they are simply different in kind — they are bigots or misogynists.
All beings capable of rational and autonomous action are part of the deontological community — a philosophical interpretation of ethics based on adherence to normative rules. Liberals acknowledge that people will sincerely disagree over ends and pursue diverse projects. This makes negotiation central to their ethics, and also makes it hard to exclude anyone from consideration and respect.
Rather than being subject to a particular account of what’s good in life from the get-go, deontological agents are ends in themselves and free to pursue their own projects so long as they do not violate the rights of others in the process.
The gender-segregated Trinity College Meeting (TCM) does not violate rights nor does it unfairly exclude. It would unfairly exclude only if it discouraged an individual from participating in an activity based on something about that individual that is irrelevant to their ability to participate in the activity. This explains why denying the right to marriage to same-sex partners is wrong. However, gender is essential to the activity in question. That means the property in question — gender— is relevant to the event, so the exclusion is not unfair.
Last year, I spearheaded a social media campaign to abolish the gendered format of an event at Trinity College. The premise of Saint’s Rush is to pick a random date for Trinity’s charity ball; boys traditionally line up on one side, girls on the other. Then the girls run after the boys in hopes of finding a date. It unjustly excludes those who are not heterosexual based on a property that is irrelevant to the function of the event.
The case of the gender-segregated meeting is not the same. The event serves no governmental function for the college. If it did, to exclude based on gender would be unjust. After all, gender is clearly not relevant to the ability to perform the role of citizen or member of college.
In fact, it would be hard to argue that the event serves much of a function beyond a particular elective one: homosocial gender play. It is thus perfectly acceptable for community members who identity within the binary to get together for homosocial bonding in traditional fashion once a year. We should respect their autonomy to do so. If the event were looking to primarily accomplish some other activity, it would be unjust.
It is not a requirement of liberals that their elective services be universally desirable. This is an impossible requirement. It may, however, be a duty of the college to create new space for gender-questioning gender expression for those who do not wish to play within the stricter confines of the binary.
A last note: it would be “bigoted” of a person to regard someone with disdain on the basis of a characteristic that is not relevant to their capacity for rational autonomy. The vast majority of students at Trinity are not guilty of this offence. Support for the gender-segregated TCM does not necessarily entail antipathy towards trans or gender-questioning people, nor does it violate their rights.
It is a paradox whenever progressives in gender politics seek to achieve legal and social recognition of inessential differences by means of positing essential differences; that is, when they exclude others from debate or brand them morally deficient bigots. It is also a double-edged sword for their cause. If the criterion for moral obligation to others were merely an agreement with one’s particular moral sentiments, then the majority would be justified in squashing troublesome minority opinions. By attending closely to the structure of our moral duties we can avoid these challenges; deontological liberalism acknowledges deep differences among rational beings and demands respect for self-determination regardless.
Michael Luoma is a fourth-year philosophy specialist at Trinity College.
