Talk about taking women seriously: Dr. Laura is absolutely masterful at doing so. And there is no better illustration of this than the way in which Dr. Laura handled Friday’s telephone call regarding Natalie, an 18-old in a relationship with an abusive boyfriend: listen here MP3. What is most impressive is just how attentively Dr. Laura had been listening from the very outset; for the conversation started out with the claim that the boyfriend was “merely” controlling and ended up with the admission on Natalie’s part that he had struck her. But that admission on Natalie’s part would not have come about had it not been for Dr. Laura’s searching and incisive questioning.
Dr. Laura’s handling of Natalie’s call was one of the most remarkable displays of moral feminism that I have ever witnessed.
Moral feminism, as I shall call it, is the view that women have a moral duty to take themselves seriously and fully appreciate their moral powers. Moral feminism embraces femininity without denying moral equality; accordingly, moral feminism does not deny that there important differences between women and men. Differences, however, do not entail subordination. Dr. Laura embodies these values.
Returning to Natalie’s call, let me mention that Dr. Laura spent 10 minutes of her radio program talking to Natalie. I mention this for two reasons. One reason is the simple fact that 10 minutes is in fact a lot of time to spend with someone who calls in to a radio program. The other reason is that when Dr. Laura senses that a person’s very soul is at stake she is willing to shift the programming in order to have additional time to reach out to that soul. This, surely, is a case of having one’s priorities right.
And speaking of priorities: a moral feminist is not ideologically driven. Dr. Laura’s discussion with Natalie was about one thing, namely the fact that Natalie should sufficiently value herself that does not up put up with physical abuse from a man. It is very significant that Dr. Laura did not excoriate the character of men generally. Not at all.
We have an inexcusable wrong when a person uses the flaws of a single person’s character as an excuse to indict everyone of that person’s sex or ethnicity.
For instance, Dr. Laura would never deny that there are whites who are racists. Quite the contrary, she has handled such calls in the context of individuals dating or marrying a member of another race. On the one hand, she has always insisted that character trumps ethnicity. On the other, she has never held that all the members of a given group are morally bankrupt. The very idea that all whites are racists makes absolutely no sense to Dr. Laura. Surely she is right. Likewise, the very idea that all men are moral scumbags makes no sense to Dr. Laura.
At the beginning of the call, Natalie was in denial. She claimed that her boyfriend—the controlling male who also had hit her—is “a good person”.
I very much appreciate the fact Dr. Laura asks her callers to give an example of what they mean by a given characterization. For it is the examples that provide the insight. What is more, Dr. Laura can serve as a moral echo to the person’s example. It is so often the case that we do not fully appreciate an assessment that we hold until we say it out loud to another person. This was clearly so in Natalie’s case. Of course, Natalie knew that she had been hit by her boyfriend. However, having to acknowledge that truth to Dr. Laura was transforming for Natalie.
Did the 10-minute conversation make it all better? Of course not. And Dr. Laura thought no such thing. Quite the contrary, Dr. Laura encouraged Natalie to seek further help and she asked Natalie’s mother to see to it that this happens.
It is rare that any of us have the opportunity to see a person through a difficulty from start to finish. But if at any step along the way we can give hope to a person going through abuse, then that is already an extraordinary moral opportunity that we have.
To give a person hope is not to give a person a reason to be angry; it is not to give a person a reason to be bitter. Rather, to give a person hope is simply to give a person reason to at least to start transforming her or his life for the better.
In the case at hand, Dr. Laura drew upon the incontrovertible truth that every woman should respect herself, a truth which does not require diminishing others. That is moral feminism at its best.
