ristotle held that women are inferior to men.  In general, the idea that women are inferior to men has a long and shameful history.  A just world, of course, will be one in which the very idea that women are inferior to men will not in any way have a claim upon either our thoughts or our motivational structure.  So, it is natural enough to think that in a entirely just world, women and men will be deemed completely equal along all dimensions, save obvious differences in biological capacities which might also include differentials with respect to physical strength.  Interestingly, what seems like a natural enough thought is in fact a mistaken thought.  Or so I shall now argue.  The argument that I shall present in what follows is, I believe, vastly superior to the one that I presented in an earlier entry.  The argument shall also speak to why Linda Hirshman’s views, as expressed in Get to Work, are so problematic. 

The argument I shall present also underscores the differences between sexism and racism that I observed in "Sexism and Racism: Some Conceptual Differences" (Ethics 1980).  Rejecting racism is, indeed, about rejecting differences attributed to groups that have no basis in reality and, in particular, no basis whatsoever evolutionary biology.  Rejecting sexism, by contrast, is not about rejecting differences.  Rather, rejecting sexism is about embracing differences that are fundamentally secure in evolutionary biology without allowing those differences to serve as a basis for declaring women superior to men or conversely. 

My this is the following: Even in an entirely just world, women will have a moral power that men simply will not have—and that moral power pertains to sexual relations and the significance of consent.  There is no asymmetry of any sort that exist between ethnic or racial groups.  Certianly, none that has an evolutionary basis.

To be sure, both women and men can consent to sex.  There is no denying that.  Just so, it remains true in the context of heterosexual sex that the consent of women in this regard will have a moral weight to it that far exceeds that moral weight that the consent of men in this regard has.  Or so it just so long as the structure of the bodies of women and the structure of the bodies of men remain unchanged.  

Naturally, any philosopher can imagine a scenario in which a man is brutally raped by a woman.  This is certainly true if we allow for anal penetration to be a part of the scenario.  On the other hand, if the scenario is that of a woman causing a man to have an erection, against his will, and then inserting his erect penis in her body, the sense in which the man is violated is hardly analogous to the case where a woman is raped by a man, where this is about the man penetrating her (against her will). 

For men, there are two conceptions of forced sex one involving the absence of consent, but no violence per se; and the other involving violence, with male-male rape serving as a paradigm example.  For women, there is only one conception of forced sex; and it necessarily involves violence. 

Now, why the difference?  Part of the explanation surely is that erections and ejaculations without consent are simply a part of the very nature of being a healthy male.  A man may curse this reality or insist that he has been treated unfairly by God.  All the same, it will be true that the nature of things is precisely as I have just described it.  So when a woman’s rape of a man focuses upon these aspects of the man, what a woman does to a man is not much different from what nature does to a man. 

While it is obvious that we have a wrong here, the wrong focuses almost exclusively upon the absence of consent rather than what was done to the male's body, since the thing done to the man’s body is akin to one of the run of the mill deliverances of nature itself.   

Needless to say, nothing of the sort is true of women.  Vaginal insertion is not a phenomenon that naturally occurs to the bodies of women independent of their consent.  There is nothing even remotely analogous to that sort thing which women experience as a part of the very nature of womanhood.  Accordingly, a man’s rape of a woman has a phenomenology to it that is independent, in a most fundamental way, of merely the absence of consent, even if no other form of physical harm is done to the woman’s body. 

This asymmetry between the bodies of women and men gives women a moral power that men do not have.  It is an asymmetry bestowed by nature itself.  What is more, it is an asymmetry which survives even in an entirely just world.  That is, even in an entirely just world the consent of women to having sex will have vastly more weight than the consent of men to having sex. 

Now, this asymmetry plays itself out in two very different and fascinating ways.  On the one hand, men owe women a respect that women do not owe men.  On the other, there is a trust that women must have in men that has no counterpart with regard to men trusting women.  The first point is easy enough to articulate: “No means no!”  To respect a woman in this regard is to have extraordinary respect for her, no matter how basic this respect proves to be.

As to the second point, there is simply no way for a relationship between a man and a woman to get around the reality that, with regard to sexual relations between them, a woman’s trust in a man will be ineluctably greater than a man’s trust in her.  This follows from the simple truth that she cannot violate him in the way that he can violate her (fantastic scenarios aside). 

Linda Hirshman, who is profoundly annoyed with the issue of women trusting men, seems to have ignored the inescapable of issue of trust to which I have drawn attention.  Well, it is not entirely inescapable—if, that is, a woman is prepared to be a lesbian or not to have sexual relations at all.  If, however, a woman is a heterosexual (and a great many are), then the idea women being in the work place does not remove the issue of trust from the female-male relationship.  Most poignantly, it does not remove the issue of trust at the most profound and meaningful level in the female-male relationship.  In turn, this truth supports the sublime view that at the most fundamental level, human relations are not at all about money. 

So what should we do?  We can always pretend that the asymmetry between women and men, to which I have drawn attention, is not real.  Alas, this pretense will be just that.  Why?  Because the reality has an inescapable grip upon our lives.  Female-male interaction is based upon this reality; and there is nothing on the face of this earth that will change that.  This difference between women and men is the fundamental reason why coyness tends to be an attribute of women rather than men.  There will always be a way in which women can be coy about sexual interest that is simply not available to men.  A man can be sexually interested in a woman and not be aroused; but if he is aroused, then the question of him being sexually interested is more or less definitively settled.  To be sure, there are signs of female arousal.  However, they do not have the explicitness of an erection.

So once more, I ask: What should we do about this asymmetry between women and men.  Well, consider the following question. When is our just behavior more virtuous? Is it (a) when we treat different individuals who are exactly alike in the right way, or is it (b) when we treat individuals who differ in morally significant ways in the right way?  If we do the former, namely (a), it goes without saying that what we do what is just.  Yet, what is surely true is that it is in doing the latter, namely (b), our just behavior is vastly more virtuous.

If the preceding point is sound, then feminists are mistaken in thinking that we achieve a more virtuous society by creating a morally flat world with regard to women and men, whereby we insist (or should I say “pretend”) that women and men are exactly like and that the physical differences between them have no moral significance. 

Quite the contrary, it is in embracing the differences between women and men that we achieve a more virtuous world.  For acknowledging the differences between women and men is one of the sublime ways we bring to the fore those excellences that distinguish homo sapiens from others species on the earth.  A more morally perfect world, then, is one that celebrates—rather than obliterates—the differences in nature between women and men. 

There are undoubtedly differences in nature that we should eschew.  Cancer is surely a case in point.  Among other things, then, moral excellence consists in being attuned to the difference between those things in nature that we should endeavor to overcome or minimize and those things in nature that marvelously contribute to our flourishing in majestically subtle ways.  Such is the case with the differences between women and men, if only we should have the courage to acknowledge it.