What does gender have to do with epistemology?

Question

I am learning about feminist epistemology through the text of Lorraine Code (What Can She Know? Feminist Theory and the Construction of Knowledge) and that of Susan Bordo (The Flight to Objectivity: Essays on Cartesianism and Culture).

Although I understand that one of the ideas of this field is to trace the influence gender might have on the way theories of knowledge are established and formalized, I do not see really the merit such approach to knowledge may have: what could be the merit? And is it not the case that once imposing gender-considerations on the nature of epistemology (rationality, objectivity, etc.) we no longer talk about general theory of knowledge? And if so, what at all could feminist theory of knowledge contribute, except for pointing to (if not preserving) allegedly intrinsic differences between the genders?

Answer 1

Some of the central lessons that 'culture' feminism has had to inject in other places (e.g. Gilligan's criticism of Kohlberg, or Fox-Keller's of abstraction as dominance) are that:

1. independence is not in-and-of-itself good (roles are ok, when they are fairly chosen),

2. mutual dependency is not automatically ambiguous or complex (a fair family structure is natural to humans),

3. a lot of what we believe is in order to agree with other people, which doesn't make it false (culture is ok, and is not a war) and

4. the choice of those people seems free, but is often really about power (interpersonal dynamics happen and are not evil, nor are they blameworthy 'lower motives').

(None of these are deep, or inaccessible in the writings of men, but they clash with components of the male role, based on defending boundaries, negotiating hierarchy, and seeming to make one's own decisions. So they fall out of theories, or they take pernicious, confrontational forms as in Marx or the Frankfurt School.)

Consider how long it took epistemology to get to Wittgenstein's notion of language-games, which after failing at a more forthright sort of logical positivism, finally injects a lot of these aspects very directly into the theory of meaning: meaning is a human game, upon which we are totally dependent, based on consensus, and we play to win, but we do not win without mutual support (because then the consensus around the game breaks down and we start saying nonsense and claiming it is deep).

This whole summary is made up of those same recurring feminist principles. Can anyone be sure it is thoroughly irrelevant that he happened to be gay?

(Before I go further, apologies: If it offends you to link homosexuality and femininity, I understand, but I cannot agree -- they are not similar, but they are linked. And on other fronts, I could equally emphasize aspects that are characteristically German, Owning-class, Jewish and Catholic, though I won't because they are not relevant here. So if this makes me a bigot, I am at least an equal-opportunity bigot. After all, I am a Nietzsche fanboy.)

Maybe that means we would have gotten to this point earlier, from a history with a better mixture of masculine and feminine perspective. And maybe that means we can get a cleaner way forward from there with a more equally mixed perspective.

Answer 2

I don't know the reasons of proposing you that read, but I've found this topic in a casual conversation, also related to the construction of knowledge by white people. I found the subject highly provocative to reflection, so I rephrase a bit the conversation:

Contemporary science, mainly on the quantum physics field, show that some physical facts can be contradictory[1], meaning that logic, and even causality can be broken. Therefore, science makers are turning their microscopes not to the object, but to the subject (tehirselves): part of the problem, or the misunderstanding could be caused by the subjectivity in our experiences with the quantum world[2]. Probably that since then, subjectivity is starting to be considered an important fact in making knowledge[3], not only on quantum physics, but in all science.

So, the merit of the approach of your reading is probably not related to gender or differences, but to subjectivity. What would be the difference if knowledge would be developed by woman, by black people or in a different continent? That difference could the proof of our subjectivity when making knowledge. Why? Because formal knowledge is supposed to be objective (as the title of your second book suggests), and it is mandatory to make the maximum effort to avoid subjective elements.

[1] https://physics.aps.org/story/v16/st10 [2] https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-quantum-physics-is-subjective [3] http://www.monorealism.com/qm/quantum-mechanics

Answer 3

Gender has to do with what you know about yourself; different people are going to argue differently about what qualifies "knowing" about yourself. This is all I can say without inserting my own extremely liberal opinions on this issue (despite being a moderate).

For example, you can look at Plato's JTB - the justification part can be valid or invalid depending on different points of view, and the "Truth" part can be bifurcated into psychology and physiology. The belief part is impossible to reckon with because what you believe is what you believe.

Hope this is helpful. I'm starting out in philosophy - not sure how helpful I can be.