La fem ir shell

Western Philosophy

Western philosophy is noticeably gendered

Warren and Cady 94, Karen J. and Duane L., “Feminism and Peace: Seeing Connections”, Volume 9, Issue 2, pages 4–20, May 1994

Lest one suppose this sexist-naturist language that informs military and nuclear parlance is an aberration of rational discourse, consider how well- entrenched sexist domination metaphors pervade the way rationality, rational or logical thinking, and rational behavior is described in Western philosophical contexts (Burtt 1969; Cady 1989; Cohn 1989; Cope-Kasten 1989; Warren 1989). Good reasoners knock down arguments; they tear, rip, chew, cut them up; attack them, try to beat, destroy, or annihilate them, preferably by nailing them to the wall. Good arguers are sharp, incisive, cutting, relentless, intimi- dating, brutal; those not good at giving arguments are wimpy, touchy, quarrel- some, irritable, nagging. Good arguments have a thrust to them: They are compelling, binding, air-tight, steel-trap, knock-down, dynamite, smashing and devastating bits of reasoning which lay things out and pin them down, overcoming any resistance. “Bad” arguments are described in metaphors of the dominated and powerless: They “fall flat on their face,” are limp, lame, soft, fuzzy, silly, and “full of holes.”

War Scenarios

Their framing of war as an inevitability is precisely the sort of gendered frame that is criticized - war discourse reifies gender inequalities and secures society’s patriarchal frame, where men are considered to be noble warriors and women become pacifists subject to condescension

Warren and Cady 94, Karen J. and Duane L., “Feminism and Peace: Seeing Connections”, Volume 9, Issue 2, pages 4–20, May 1994

One glaring example of how the dominant cultural outlook manifests this oppressive conceptual framework is seen in macho, polarized, dichotomized attitudes toward war and peace. Pacifists are dismissed as naive, soft wimps; warriors are realistic, hard heroes. War and peace are seen as opposites. In fact few individual warists or pacifists live up to these exaggerated extremes. This suggests a reconceptualization of values along a continuum which allows degrees of pacifism and degrees of justification for war (Cady 1989). Feminist philosophers regard conceptual considerations to be at the core of peace issues because many of the other women-peace connections can be explained theoretically with an analysis of patriarchal conceptual frameworks in place. The evidence for the existence of such conceptual connections comes from a wide variety of sources: empirical data and history; art, literature, and religion; politics, ethics, and epistemology; language and science. Although we cannot discuss all of these sources here, we do consider several. They are evidence of woman-peace connections that, in turn, help to establish the nature and significance of the conceptual connections. Empirical connections provide concrete data linking women, children, people of color, and the poor, with environmental destruction and various forms of violence, especially war. Military operations such as the Persian Gulf War not only kill humans; they wreak havoc on the environment by releasing toxics, pollutants, and radioactive materials into the air, water, and food. In the Middle East and in large portions of the southern hemisphere women and children bear the responsibilities, determined by gender and age roles, of collecting and distributing water; thus the women and the children are the ones who are disproportionally harmed by the presence of unsafe, or unpotable, water.

USFG

At its very root America and by extention its government are patriarchal

COHEN( professor of sociology)NOV 19 2012(PHILIP, “America is still a patriarchy”, The Atlantic, http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2012/11/america-is-still-a-patriarchy/265428/)

In fact—my interpretation of the facts—the United States, like every society in the world, remains a patriarchy: they are ruled by men. That is not just because every country (except Rwanda) has a majority-male national parliament, and it is despite the handful of countries with women heads of state. It is a systemic characteristic that combines dynamics at the level of the family, the economy, the culture and the political arena.¶ Top political and economic leaders are the low-hanging fruit of patriarchy statistics. But they probably are in the end the most important—the telling pattern is that the higher you look, the maler it gets. If a society really had a stable, female-dominated power structure for an extended period of time even I would eventually question whether it was really still a patriarchy.In my own area of research things are messier, because families and workplaces differ so much and power is usually jointly held. But I'm confident in describing American families as mostly patriarchal.¶ Maybe the most basic indicator is the apparently quaint custom of wives assuming their husbands' names. This hasn't generated much feminist controversy lately. But to an anthropologist from another planet, this patrilineality would be a major signal that American families are male-dominated.¶ Among U.S.-born married women, only 6 percent had a surname that differed from their husband's in 2004 (it was not until the 1970s that married women could even function legally using their "maiden" names). Among the youngest women the rate is higher, so there is a clear pattern of change—but no end to the tradition in sight.¶ Of course, the proportion of people getting married has fallen, and the number of children born to non-married parents has risen. Single parenthood—and the fact that this usually means single motherhood—reflects both women's growing independence and the burdens of care that fall on them (another piece of the patriarchal puzzle). This is one of many very important changes. But they don't add up to a non-patriarchal society.