Essay Questions:
- What is a woman?
- By drawing on views and argument in the text, defend one view.
- Present the most powerful arguments against your view.
- Explain what this argument gets wrong.
- Explain how your position better accounts for the phenomena that the other view gets wrong.
- Is the Warrior model harmful to men?
- Explain Tom Digby’s argument for why the warrior model of manhood is harmful to men.
- What is the strongest argument in favor of the warrior model for manhood?
- Provide the strongest objection to whichever view you support.
- Explain why that objection fails and the other view is correct.
- Are gender roles equally harmful to men and women?
- By drawing on course content, defend your position.
- Present the most powerful argument against your view.
- Explain what this argument gets wrong.
- Explain how your position better accounts for the phenomena.
- Pick a profession/occupation that is dominated by one gender.
- Is this gender imbalance a result of characteristics inherent to the genders?
- What is the strongest objection to your view?
- Explain either the false premise(s) or bad inferences in the objection.
- Explain how your position better explains the phenomena.
- Should we be gender nihilists?
- Explain Earp’s argument for why there is no “one true” gender concept and why we should instead focus on why we are drawing a line in a particular domain.
- If gender should be conceived of differently in each situation and/or if we should only focus on the particular concrete properties relevant to our purpose, does it follow that we should abandon the concept of gender?
- Defend the affirmative or negative position. Use examples to defend your position.
- What is the strongest objection to your position?
- Explain what the objection gets wrong and
- why your view is better.
- Beauvoir is concern about how women become objects of pleasure for men. But sometimes people (women included!) like to feel sexy, and maybe even objectified.
- Explain why Beauvoir thinks women and men cannot be free/equal if women are objectified. (See the Conclusion)
- Is objectification of women always bad in romantic relationships? Defend your answer.
- What is the strongest objection to your view?
- Why does the objection fail?
- We know that sex is the product of both differentiation and development. For example, some women are XY (differentiation) but developed as women. Suppose it turns out that that trans people’s brains developed in a way that conforms with the opposite sex of their body. If this were true
- Which gender are they? Provide an argument to support your position
- In terms of Hackings kinds, what kind of human kind are they?
- What is the strongest objection to your argument in (a)?
- Why does the objection fail?
- How does your view better account for what the objection tries to point out?
- Suppose someone says to you that the portrayal of homosexuality and sexual violence in pro wrestling is “just entertainment. People know it’s fake. What’s the harm?” Do they have a point? (Throughout your paper, you must appeal to ideas in at least Beauvoir or Digby)
- Justify your position.
- What is the strongest objection to your position?
- Why does the objection fail?
- Why is your view better?
- Is there room for gender roles?
- A popular view is that gender roles complement each other and allow families and communities to flourish. They provided a clear division of labor and expectations for each sex.
- Drawing on Beauvoir and Digby, what is the strongest objection to this view?
- How might a gender conservative reply to the objection?
- Evaluate which position you think is strongest. Justify your position.
- The New Man
- Explain Digby’s argument against the warrior model of masculinity.
- Should we replace it with a different gender specific model (i.e., are there certain traits that men should strive for—maybe we keep some of the old ones that are good but discard the troublesome ones, and maybe add in some new ones) or should be abandon the gendering of traits altogether and just encourage certain virtues regardless of gender?
- Justify your position.
- What is the strongest objection to your view?
- Explain why the objection fails.
- Beauvoir on WAP
- Explain Beauvoir’s view (in the Conclusion) on women using sexuality, women’s independence/empowerment, and self-actualization.
- In light of this view, would she see “WAP” as an instance of women’s liberation and empowerment, an obstacle to women’s liberation and empowerment, or an instance of “playing both sides”?
- What is the strongest objection to the view in (b)?
- Drawing on your answers to (b) and (c), justify whether WAP is an instance of female liberation or whether it harms the cause of women?
- Here are two possible diagnosis of a critique of gender models. On one view, there are problems with traditional both gender models. The solution is to abolish the gender valence of all traits, characteristic, and virtues that are modeled for young men and women. On this view, if a trait, characteristic, or virtue is good, it’s good regardless of a person’s sex and so they should be encouraged to develop/adopt it. The other view also acknowledges the harms that arise out of traditional gender models but argues that the solution isn’t a genderless world. What we need are gender models that are stripped of the harmful elements found in the traditional models. So, men should aspire to a model of masculinity, just not the warrior-based one. Similarly, there is a ‘good’ gender model for women, it just isn’t the traditional one that places women in a position of subservience.
- Drawing on readings from the course, defend one of the two views with an argument.
- What is the strongest objection to your view?
- Explain why the objection fails.
- Explain why your view is better.
Wrestling with Philosophy 