#8 Social Justice & Desire | with Cara Addleman

What does it take for us to be free people? How should we think about our desires when those desires are formed by oppressive social structures? Cara Addleman, a third-year Wadham student studying Philosophy, Politics & Economics won the College's Cheney Prize for her essay addressing these questions.

We discuss the ideas and themes of her essay, explore her own doubts about her conclusions, and have a friendly philosophical back-and-forth. 

 Do note that the episode contains some references to sexual assault and abuse. 

You can contact Cara at cara@wadham.ox.ac.uk or in her capacity as a SU Women's Officer at su.women@wadham.ox.ac.uk

You can provide feedback on Wadcast at https://www.wadham.ox.ac.uk/wadcast

You can listen to past episodes of Wadcast on all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Spotify.

Transcript

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I think it's right to say that by having long hair

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I am furthering patriarchal norms. It seems wrong

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and far too strong to say that I have a duty not to.

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You're listening to Wadcast,

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a podcast from Wadham College, University of Oxford,

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bringing you interviews, seminars and stories from our community.

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Welcome to episode eight. My name's Martin.

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I work in Communications, for Wadham College. In this episode,

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I talk to Cara Addleman, a Wadham student in her third year studying PPE.

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She won the college's

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Cheney prize for her essay on the philosophy of social justice.

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Our congratulations to Cara.

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We talk through the ideas and themes of her essay. Questions like “What does it take

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for us to be free people?” and “how should we think about our desires

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when those desires are formed by oppressive social structures. We’ll dive in in a moment.

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But before we roll the episode,

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be aware that at various points in the conversation we do reference

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sexual assault and abuse.

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Thanks Cara for joining me today to discuss your essay

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and broader issues around philosophy and justice.

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Maybe you can start by just sharing a bit about who you are, what you do at Wadham

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and what you study.

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So on.

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I'm Cara.

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I'm in my third year studying PPE,

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although economics was dropped a while ago now, so it feels

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like a bit of a distant memory.

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And yeah outside of my degree in the rare hours that are outside of my degree

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I’m a SU women's officer with my friend Nia. More generally, often

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with Nia and other PPE-ers and some others

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kind of hauled up in Wadham library or I go to SU yoga quite a lot.

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So we're going to be talking about your Cheney prizewinning essay

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The essay deals with issues of freedom and social

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justice, issues like what does it take for us to be free people?

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And you defend a particular theory of social justice.

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But before we get into the particulars of that theory, there might be some people

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listening who wonder why theorize about social justice at all?

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Why not just go out and tackle it?

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Easy question.

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I mean, I'm not going to try and make out that my undergrad essay is

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somehow equivalent to like political protest or actually

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taking a more active stance on issues of injustice

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and also, I guess at the end of the day, a large part of the reason

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why I wrote the essay’s just because I think it's quite interesting,

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but I'd like to think that it's not completely irrelevant either.

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I guess specifically, this essay is kind of looking at cases

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where it seems like there's an injustice involved somewhere,

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but it's not actually obvious what that is

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and what is kind of responsible for the injustice.

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And so it's not clear

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what kind of just going out there and tackling it would look like.

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Right.

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If we didn't first think about why is this unjust

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in what way is it unjust so maybe it's of some value.

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Yeah, that makes sense to me.

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One thing I was thinking about as I read your essay is just that

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as you point out, it's not always clear in a given case

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a) whether there is injustice going on or if there is.

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What is the source of the injustice that what makes

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that particular event or interaction unjust?

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And so you kind of don't really know what tool

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to apply to something if you don't know what the problem is exactly.

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And maybe theorising can help us get a clearer grasp of what the problem is.

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Maybe.

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Hopefully, But let's assume that we're on board

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for some theorising, at least for the purposes of the podcast.

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The particular theory of social justice you defend is called

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the Republican theory of Social Justice.

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Could you explain what that theory is and maybe clarify

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what “Republican” means in this context?

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Yeah.

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So it's not US Republicanism if that's the the worry.

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So in this context, it's basically like a theory of social justice

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as obtaining where people have

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freedom in their interpersonal relationships.

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But freedom's understood in quite a specific way as not being dominated.

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So this idea of like freedom of non- domination

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and domination occurs,

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so say A would dominate B if A has the capacity

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to interfere B’s choices in a way that B doesn't control.

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So the Republican view doesn't require that we’re never interfered with.

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It just requires

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that when we're interfered with, it's kind of on our terms.

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Is that right? Yeah.

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So can you explain a bit more about what

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the difference would be, maybe using an example between being interfered

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with not on your terms and being interfered with on your terms?

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Yes. I’m gonna say Philip Pettit, I always want to say petite

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but I might have his name wrong... but Philip Pettit,

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who sort of founded Republicanism

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has this quite famous example of like an alcohol cupboard case.

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So say you decide that you don't want to drink

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for the next week and you lock all your

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alcohol in the cupboard and you give me the key

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and you're like, Cara, no matter what I say to you, don't give this back to me.

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If in two days time you then come back and ask for the key and I say, No,

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I'm interfering with your choices

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because I'm preventing you from choosing to go and drink.

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But I'm doing so on terms that you laid out.

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Basically, I'm doing it under your instructions.

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And so that interference would count as controlled for Pettit.

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And it has quite interesting

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implications in terms of like on a state level,

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because Pettit basically tries to argue that democracy counts

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as the citizens controlling the state’s interference if it's...

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Yeah, right.

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Yeah.

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If it's sufficiently democratic.

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Yeah.

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So yeah, there definitely are cases in Republicanism where you can interfere

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and that's not seen as like inhibiting anyone's freedom.

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That's really interesting.

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Why do you prefer the Republican theory

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as any other theory

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On the Republican theory of justice

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you're dominated if you were exposed to somebody’s capacity to interfere with you.

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But because even if they don't actually interfere,

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but they just have the power to

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essentially that still counts as domination on a Republican account.

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So it's quite different from, say, like liberalism in that sense,

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which focuses more purely on non-interference.

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And so long as people don't interfere with your choices, you're fine

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you’re free. Republicanism can capture,

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I think, more successfully in cases where we feel like

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there's something unjust, but there isn't any actual interference.

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So I would say if you have a society where, say, marital rape were legal

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and socially condoned, and so it's kind of structurally

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supported and it's not really punished, liberalism

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might see that as bad and it might say, hey, we should criminalise this.

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And we should kind of socially sanction this.

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But it's reason for doing so would just be that in cases

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where a wife were raped by her husband, she would be therefore interfered with.

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It's kind of a ridiculously academic way of talking about that,

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and that would be objectionable.

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Republicanism can kind of go one step further and say

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just the fact that he’d have the power to is objectionable in and of itself.

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And where he acts on that power, that's worse

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and that's kind of a greater injustice.

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But we should criminalize and socially sanction this,

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not just to try and minimize the chances or the probability

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of interference occurring, but because even if interference

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never occurred, just living under that power is objectionable.

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Okay, great. That's really helpful.

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But what your essay deals with is a problem

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that the Republican theory faces, like a particular objection.

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And can you explain what the problem is?

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Yeah, so I kind of talk about it as

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the problem from adaptive preferences

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so adaptive preferences I am roughly defining

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as where the options that are available to someone are limited by their oppression.

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And so their preference is formed in response to that repression.

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The sort of running example is where

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women have a sexual preference for their own subordination,

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but that preference is formed by patriarchal social conditioning.

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I think there are, yeah, such sort of

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strong patriarchal conditioning into these roles

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that a lot of women do basically prefer

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subordination in various ways.

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So I mean, probably the stuff

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that comes to mind is like more S&M type thing, but also

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it's a lot broader than that.

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I might also be kind of preference for a man to initiate a date

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rather than a woman or a man to be the one that proposes rather than the woman.

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And so I think it's actually quite widespread.

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Right. Okay. Yes.

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So we have these adaptive preferences, the concept of them

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preferences taht are genuine preferences of the person who has them,

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but nonetheless, they have been shaped by oppressive social structures.

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So why do these adaptive preferences cause a problem

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for the Republican theory of justice?

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So because like I spoke about earlier on

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the Republican theory of justice interference is only problematic

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it only counts as dominating if it's not controlled by the person.

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There'll be lots of cases where adaptive preferences

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might lead someone to prefer and then say consent to

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or initiate interferences

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say a particular sexual act where

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they might not have consented to it if it weren't

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for having adaptive preferences.

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But nonetheless they do consent.

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And intuitively that seems like a case where they control

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that interference, just like in the alcohol cupboard case.

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And so that's not necessarily the wrong

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Well, I'm going to argue it's not the wrong verdict, but

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it does seem to suggest that Republicanism just has nothing to say about

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what's unjust in, for example, women choosing to be sexually subordinate

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or people acting on their adaptive preferences more generally.

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Yes. So if I’m following then

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when we look at a case of an adaptive preference at work,

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like a woman preferring to be sexually submissive

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and consenting to sexual acts that put her in that submissive position,

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there seems to be intuitively there's something unjust

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like around this territory,

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but it seems at least on first glance, that the Republican theory

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cannot capture or say anything about that injustice,

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because it seems like in the details of the case,

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the conditions for a just or free relationship are satisfied

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that the person is acting with a genuine desire.

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And if they're consenting to a sexual act

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that puts them in a submissive position, yeah, they're being interfered with.

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But it's on the basis of their genuine preferences.

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And so we have a situation where

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intuitively we still want to say there's something unjust about this.

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After all the preferences are kind of formed by these oppressive structures,

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but it's not clear what the Republican view can actually say

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about that injustice.

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Yeah. So, okay. You're summarizing this

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far more eloquently than I’m saying it in the first place

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But yeah, that's exactly it. Cool.

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You want to defend the Republican view from this objection.

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You think that there is a good way of critiquing the objection,

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but there's also a way to respond that you don't think is ultimately successful.

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Yeah.

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So what's the the wrong way to defend the Republican view?

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So I think the wrong way is to try and argue

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that acting on adaptive preferences and any interference

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consented to based on them actually is unjust on a Republican account.

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So you could try and kind of push back against this idea

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that consent equals control and sort of say

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actually where consent is based on adaptive preferences, it doesn't.

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And therefore, because it would be uncontrolled

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interference, it would be domination, it would be unjust.

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All right.

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So, sorry, to jump in.

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So you're saying that according to this response,

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if you're consenting to something on the basis of your adaptive preferences,

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it's not really on your terms. Yeah. Yeah.

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So that would be exactly it.

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You would have to try and argue that it's not really the agent's true choice. Yeah,

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so I think that this response is quite problematic

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because on the face of it, there just clearly are cases

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where consent does control the interference.

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So like the cases we were just speaking about where someone

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consents to submissive sexual acts, but say, you know,

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their partner wouldn't do that unless they were to consent.

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It seems pretty clear there that they do control it.

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And so to try and argue that even in such cases, it's actually

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not the agent, but instead kind of the social structures

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which are shaping their preferences that controls the interference, denies

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the agency of the person involved and denies

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the fact that from the inside it still feels just like their preferences

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and their choosing to act on them and also seems to kind of elide

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the distinction between someone consenting

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to an interference where their consent is based on adaptive preferences

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and someone just not consenting, because either way it would be

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the patriarchal social structures which give their sexual partner

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that capacity to interfere rather than their choice or their consent.

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And I think that hopefully it's obvious that those are two very different cases.

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Yeah, no, that that seems right.

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So let's grant that that’s not a very promising

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avenue for defending Republican.

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What IS a more promising route?

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So I think

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and try to argue not so sure if I succeed on this one,

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that Republicanism can still say that there is an injustice involved.

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It's not sort of left with nothing to say by recognizing that when adaptive

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preferences are formed, that formation itself is dominating.

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And so even then if people go on

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to choose X, Y or Z on the basis of those preferences

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that need not constitute domination, there is still domination

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and therefore kind of a Republican idea of injustice involved.

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Yeah, So that sounds like what initially motivated this problem

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was that intuitively there's something unjust in this like territory roughly

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and you're saying, okay,

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what the Republican can do is say we shouldn't locate the injustice

00:15:50:09 - 00:15:54:09
in like a particular act of consent.

00:15:54:14 - 00:15:58:15
So it shouldn't we shouldn't locate the injustice when, for instance, a

00:15:59:16 - 00:16:02:10
woman via her adaptive preferences,

00:16:02:18 - 00:16:06:12
consents to a sexually submissive act

00:16:07:08 - 00:16:09:20
where we should locate the injustice

00:16:09:24 - 00:16:14:21
and so say there's something right about our intuitions is in the fact

00:16:14:21 - 00:16:17:21
that those adaptive preferences were formed in the first place.

00:16:18:01 - 00:16:19:17
Yeah. Okay.

00:16:19:20 - 00:16:22:23
You said you're not 100% sure that your response succeeds.

00:16:23:00 - 00:16:25:02
What are the concerns that you have about it?

00:16:25:23 - 00:16:31:04
So kind of up until now and at the beginning when I was explaining

00:16:31:04 - 00:16:36:07
what domination is, it's sort of this idea that person A dominates person B

00:16:36:21 - 00:16:39:15
when they have this capacity for uncontrolled interference

00:16:40:03 - 00:16:43:23
and where adaptive preferences are formed,

00:16:44:10 - 00:16:48:08
it might not be that there is any person A who dominates.

00:16:48:18 - 00:16:53:01
So it might be that, you know, there's the agent and just through

00:16:53:09 - 00:16:57:24
kind of seemingly or ostensibly innocuous social structures

00:16:58:08 - 00:17:02:07
like the way that we’re brought up the kind of films that we see,

00:17:02:20 - 00:17:07:11
books that we read all present it as such that women

00:17:07:11 - 00:17:11:05
ought to be more passive and men ought to be more active and dominant.

00:17:12:00 - 00:17:15:18
And so thereby this person acquires adaptive

00:17:15:18 - 00:17:18:24
preferences it’s not very obvious here

00:17:19:00 - 00:17:21:02
that there’s anyone in particular who dominates her.

00:17:21:16 - 00:17:26:20
So to explain how it is still domination, I think we need to have this concept

00:17:26:20 - 00:17:31:02
of systemic domination, which is the idea that someone can be dominated

00:17:31:17 - 00:17:36:00
because they are systematically disempowered relative to other agents,

00:17:36:11 - 00:17:40:19
even if there aren't any other agents that are actually doing the dominating.

00:17:40:19 - 00:17:45:11
And I think that this does work as a response

00:17:45:11 - 00:17:50:19
in saying that the formation of adaptive preferences is unjust.

00:17:50:19 - 00:17:53:23
What I'm less sure about is whether it remains unjust

00:17:53:23 - 00:17:55:08
because it involves domination

00:17:55:08 - 00:17:58:11
or whether it kind of collapses into maybe another thing like oppression.

00:17:59:01 - 00:18:01:07
Right, Right. That's interesting.

00:18:01:07 - 00:18:02:01
Yeah.

00:18:02:01 - 00:18:08:02
So, yeah, the concern here is that what started off as an account that

00:18:09:10 - 00:18:10:17
framed injustice as a

00:18:10:17 - 00:18:13:21
relationship between two people, or two persons...

00:18:14:11 - 00:18:19:03
Now, to maintain your response, you kind of have to say that injustice can

00:18:19:03 - 00:18:24:04
occur between a person and this slightly more like diffuse group of people.

00:18:24:04 - 00:18:24:13
Yeah.

00:18:24:13 - 00:18:28:16
When no one agent bears the full brunt of any responsibility,

00:18:28:16 - 00:18:31:22
but they all kind of participate slightly in some diffuse way.

00:18:32:07 - 00:18:33:04
Yeah, exactly.

00:18:33:04 - 00:18:35:02
Which I think is

00:18:35:09 - 00:18:37:07
a good thing insofar as I think that much more

00:18:37:07 - 00:18:41:15
accurately captures how injustice is perpetrated

00:18:41:15 - 00:18:44:22
a lot of the time or how it permeates through society.

00:18:44:22 - 00:18:49:14
But I guess the worry would be that what made domination

00:18:49:14 - 00:18:52:18
this like distinct concept in the first place was this idea of

00:18:53:15 - 00:18:56:03
the kind of paradigm like master slave relationship

00:18:56:03 - 00:18:59:22
where there's someone kind of imposing their will on somebody else.

00:18:59:22 - 00:19:01:07
So I don't think that it's

00:19:02:08 - 00:19:02:16
like a

00:19:02:16 - 00:19:06:06
flaw of a theory of social justice to focus on,

00:19:06:12 - 00:19:10:14
like the diffuse ways that kind of power can be exercised over people.

00:19:10:17 - 00:19:11:16
But it might just be that

00:19:11:16 - 00:19:15:21
I kind of fail to vindicate Republicanism as that theory of social justice.

00:19:15:21 - 00:19:19:20
Like, maybe the theory has transformed into a different theory.

00:19:20:07 - 00:19:22:15
Maybe. I'm still hoping not.

00:19:22:15 - 00:19:23:19
Yeah,

00:19:24:08 - 00:19:27:00
that is that is interesting.

00:19:28:05 - 00:19:30:20
And one of the things that you address in the longer form

00:19:30:20 - 00:19:33:04
of your essay, which I’ve read, is

00:19:34:14 - 00:19:39:06
an objection or a concern that I had upon like second read of your essay.

00:19:39:06 - 00:19:42:18
And then you addressed what I was concerned about so well done on that.

00:19:42:18 - 00:19:44:19
And I was thinking, Yeah, but,

00:19:44:19 - 00:19:49:04
you know, none of our preferences are entirely free from social control.

00:19:49:10 - 00:19:51:12
So it has to be...

00:19:52:05 - 00:19:55:04
What makes the formation of an adaptive preference

00:19:55:04 - 00:19:58:05
unjust has to be more than just that

00:19:58:05 - 00:20:02:06
the person didn't autonomously create them

00:20:02:06 - 00:20:06:22
in some like social void it has to be something distinct from that.

00:20:06:24 - 00:20:11:13
So yeah, I think you appealed to some particular criteria

00:20:11:13 - 00:20:15:13
that make adaptive preferences the formation of them

00:20:15:13 - 00:20:18:14
an injustice, but not some other preferences.

00:20:18:14 - 00:20:20:22
Yeah. So yeah, exactly what you're saying.

00:20:20:22 - 00:20:25:05
I mean, basically all of our preferences are influenced by our social conditions.

00:20:25:05 - 00:20:28:07
I mean, I think I mentioned earlier, let's say someone who votes based on what

00:20:28:07 - 00:20:32:12
their parents vote on or if my music taste is influenced

00:20:32:12 - 00:20:35:19
by the kind of music that my friends listen to, that kind of thing.

00:20:36:15 - 00:20:36:24
Yeah.

00:20:36:24 - 00:20:40:16
So there are case like that where it's very obvious that social conditioning

00:20:40:16 - 00:20:45:03
is involved, but we very much wouldn't want to say that that makes the person

00:20:45:03 - 00:20:49:03
kind of dominated or that constitutes kind of social injustice.

00:20:49:03 - 00:20:53:12
I think we can differentiate cases of adaptive preference formation

00:20:53:12 - 00:20:57:18
from this kind of more innocuous preference formation because where

00:20:57:18 - 00:21:01:17
adaptive preferences are formed, it is the case that the person

00:21:01:17 - 00:21:06:03
who forms their adaptive preferences is kind of systematically disempowered

00:21:06:16 - 00:21:11:17
relative to another group that's empowered by their having that preference.

00:21:11:17 - 00:21:16:02
And so to kind of give an example, if a woman forms a preference

00:21:16:02 - 00:21:18:12
for sexual subordination, kind of indirectly,

00:21:18:12 - 00:21:24:10
we can say that that empowers men because it's feeding into patriarchal

00:21:24:10 - 00:21:29:01
norms where women are submissive and those norms privilege men.

00:21:29:01 - 00:21:34:11
And so there's a sense in which by her forming adaptive preferences,

00:21:34:17 - 00:21:38:10
not only is she not in control of her preference formation,

00:21:38:10 - 00:21:42:07
but also others are kind of given power relative to her.

00:21:42:10 - 00:21:45:16
So yeah, the idea is that adaptive preferences,

00:21:45:16 - 00:21:51:03
unlike some other more innocuous kinds of preferences formed by society, are

00:21:51:04 - 00:21:55:13
that these are ones which end up giving one group power over another.

00:21:55:18 - 00:21:58:20
Or am I misconstruing that? That is what I just said.

00:21:58:20 - 00:22:01:23
But I'm just debating whether or not that's what I want to say.

00:22:01:24 - 00:22:03:07
Okay. Right. Sure

00:22:04:10 - 00:22:07:13
So I think what I want to try and argue

00:22:07:13 - 00:22:11:10
is that kind of regardless of the consequences

00:22:12:04 - 00:22:14:13
in the very process of adaptive preference

00:22:14:13 - 00:22:19:17
formation, one group is empowered relative to the person

00:22:19:17 - 00:22:23:00
whose preferences they are and potentially their social group who are disempowered.

00:22:23:04 - 00:22:26:03
So in the essay,

00:22:26:03 - 00:22:29:05
I try to use this this idea of objectification,

00:22:29:15 - 00:22:32:17
which is I mean, it's Sally Haslanger’s definition

00:22:32:17 - 00:22:36:01
and it's quite technical but basically the idea is that

00:22:36:06 - 00:22:41:05
if one group of persons has like social power over another,

00:22:41:19 - 00:22:45:11
then the way that they want someone to be

00:22:45:22 - 00:22:48:24
might force that person to actually become that way.

00:22:49:10 - 00:22:52:18
So I think the quote is something along the lines of like men

00:22:52:18 - 00:22:55:19
wanting women to be subordinate forces them to become subordinate.

00:22:56:10 - 00:22:57:08
And I think that

00:22:58:07 - 00:22:59:16
with a

00:22:59:16 - 00:23:03:01
suitably loose understanding of what we mean by force here,

00:23:03:02 - 00:23:07:10
I think it is actually quite plausible that the fact that it's benefited

00:23:07:10 - 00:23:12:09
men for women to be submissive and for men to have more power relative to them

00:23:13:00 - 00:23:17:01
has meant that we have masses of media

00:23:17:01 - 00:23:20:16
in which that is kind of romanticized or eroticized or promoted,

00:23:21:21 - 00:23:24:17
and therefore people's preferences are kind of

00:23:25:19 - 00:23:27:10
formed according to that.

00:23:27:10 - 00:23:31:02
And it's the case that men's preferences are also formed according to that.

00:23:32:00 - 00:23:35:18
But in such a case, it's like the way that men...

00:23:36:21 - 00:23:40:00
the idea would be men wanting men

00:23:40:00 - 00:23:44:09
to be dominant causes men to become dominant.

00:23:44:09 - 00:23:46:21
whereas if that’s the sort of parallel quote

00:23:47:12 - 00:23:50:24
So there's not the same disempowerment relative to another group

00:23:51:12 - 00:23:54:19
that there would be in the case of men wanting women to be subordinate

00:23:54:19 - 00:23:56:12
forces women to become subordinate.

00:23:56:12 - 00:23:59:04
Yeah, Yeah, that makes sense.

00:23:59:08 - 00:24:03:09
We're definitely going to have to explain like some relevant difference between

00:24:03:09 - 00:24:06:22
the formation of adaptive preferences and just any other preferences. And

00:24:07:24 - 00:24:09:16
what you described

00:24:09:16 - 00:24:13:11
strikes me as as good a way as any to make that distinction.

00:24:13:11 - 00:24:17:10
And I think in my mind it returns a little bit

00:24:17:10 - 00:24:21:14
to the worry that you had that maybe at the end of this

00:24:21:14 - 00:24:24:23
you get a really great theory of justice, but it's just not the Republican one.

00:24:25:09 - 00:24:29:15
But yeah, the reason I say that ... my concern is that

00:24:30:03 - 00:24:33:11
according to the Republican theory of justice,

00:24:33:11 - 00:24:36:10
you know, what can make something unjust is this

00:24:37:04 - 00:24:39:17
interference with another agent not on their terms.

00:24:40:11 - 00:24:41:15
And that might be fine.

00:24:41:15 - 00:24:44:07
Like that might be sufficient to make something unjust.

00:24:45:01 - 00:24:47:20
But it's not clear now that that's necessary,

00:24:48:00 - 00:24:51:22
just because in the case of adaptive preference formation,

00:24:52:08 - 00:24:55:16
it seems like what we're appealing to now is something a little different,

00:24:55:16 - 00:25:01:00
something like power exertion, where we're no longer talking about terms,

00:25:01:05 - 00:25:04:19
whether it's on anyone's terms, I could be entirely mistaken.

00:25:04:20 - 00:25:06:21
No, I feel like that's a good point.

00:25:06:21 - 00:25:08:01
I will try and

00:25:09:00 - 00:25:11:13
push back. Yeah do!

00:25:12:05 - 00:25:16:15
So for Republicanism it’s sort of always about power insofar

00:25:16:15 - 00:25:20:04
as it's the capacity for uncontrolled interference that’s problematic

00:25:20:19 - 00:25:24:19
and I think that it is relevant in the case of

00:25:24:19 - 00:25:28:01
adaptive preference formation that it's not on the person's terms.

00:25:28:16 - 00:25:32:13
So if it were the case that

00:25:33:17 - 00:25:38:06
I could consent to how my preferences are formed

00:25:38:19 - 00:25:43:08
and thereby determine the conditions on which my preferences were formed,

00:25:43:17 - 00:25:47:06
if I could sort of say, Oh yeah, I'm really happy

00:25:47:13 - 00:25:51:14
to be influenced by patriarchal structures such that

00:25:52:11 - 00:25:54:24
I would prefer to have long hair,

00:25:54:24 - 00:25:57:14
then I could say, Well,

00:25:57:21 - 00:26:00:12
nothing's interfered with me in a way that I haven't controlled.

00:26:00:23 - 00:26:04:11
I think that because our preferences dictate what we choose

00:26:04:20 - 00:26:07:19
in the first place, it's just not intelligible that

00:26:08:09 - 00:26:11:01
we could control the way that our preferences are formed

00:26:11:22 - 00:26:13:14
by, say, patriarchal structures.

00:26:13:14 - 00:26:16:22
So I think that that still is doing some work.

00:26:17:19 - 00:26:18:12
Yeah, that's helpful

00:26:18:12 - 00:26:20:09
actually, I think I follow that.

00:26:20:09 - 00:26:25:11
I think the mistake I was making was in thinking that okay, because

00:26:26:18 - 00:26:29:04
like necessarily

00:26:29:04 - 00:26:31:08
you aren’t sort of consenting

00:26:31:08 - 00:26:34:17
to your preference formation, that the,

00:26:35:19 - 00:26:39:11
that your lack of consent was morally irrelevant in that case.

00:26:39:14 - 00:26:43:01
On the Republican theory, you kind of need like two things.

00:26:43:01 - 00:26:47:19
You need some like interference, so some kind of exercise of power, say,

00:26:48:08 - 00:26:52:05
and you need for that to not be on your terms, for that to be

00:26:52:07 - 00:26:54:21
unjust or...? The only

00:26:54:21 - 00:26:57:21
mistake is that you don't need there to be any actual exercise of the power.

00:26:57:21 - 00:26:58:18
All right.

00:26:58:18 - 00:27:00:00
The capacity. Yes.

00:27:00:00 - 00:27:01:23
Yeah, right. True, true, true.

00:27:01:23 - 00:27:03:24
When it comes to adaptive preferences,

00:27:04:21 - 00:27:07:07
they are necessarily

00:27:07:07 - 00:27:12:12
subject to the “not on your terms” condition in the same way that any desires

00:27:12:12 - 00:27:18:02
which are formed by societal influences satisfy that condition.

00:27:18:03 - 00:27:20:22
So that conditioning is like almost trivially satisfied.

00:27:21:24 - 00:27:23:04
But in the case

00:27:23:04 - 00:27:26:09
of adaptive preferences and not more innocuous preferences,

00:27:26:09 - 00:27:30:13
you also get this capacity or exercise of power over you.

00:27:30:13 - 00:27:34:01
All that to say, I think your response succeeds to my worry.

00:27:35:04 - 00:27:37:02
You sound more confident than I am.

00:27:37:07 - 00:27:38:13
But that's nice.

00:27:38:13 - 00:27:39:03
Yeah. Yeah.

00:27:39:03 - 00:27:41:01
No, I think that summed it up

00:27:41:01 - 00:27:42:03
helpfully actually.

00:27:42:03 - 00:27:45:03
Cool. Well, let's tie things together.

00:27:45:15 - 00:27:50:19
What does all this show us about justice more broadly? Scary question.

00:27:50:19 - 00:27:55:01
I think it raises some quite interesting questions

00:27:55:01 - 00:27:59:21
about the extent of our responsibility to combat injustice

00:28:00:06 - 00:28:01:15
that I think on the face of it

00:28:01:15 - 00:28:05:10
we’d want to say that wherever we are responsible for perpetuating injustice,

00:28:05:19 - 00:28:08:12
we ought not to do that and we ought to act differently.

00:28:08:18 - 00:28:12:04
But once we see that... “once we see” - that’s a very confident

00:28:12:04 - 00:28:15:22
way of assuming my argument works, if we see that

00:28:17:01 - 00:28:20:13
the formation of adaptive practices is unjust,

00:28:20:13 - 00:28:26:22
then there are so many kind of small and seemingly harmless ways that

00:28:26:22 - 00:28:30:12
we all contribute to forming one another's adaptive preferences all the time.

00:28:30:24 - 00:28:33:04
Like I mentioned earlier, I have long hair.

00:28:33:13 - 00:28:37:04
Like if I have a daughter and I'm wearing makeup and have my hair long,

00:28:37:14 - 00:28:41:06
then that might reinforce to her that that's how a woman ought to dress

00:28:41:06 - 00:28:43:15
and that then perpetuates patriarchal norms.

00:28:44:22 - 00:28:48:12
And so I think it's right to say that

00:28:49:11 - 00:28:52:16
by having long hair, I am furthering patriarchal norms.

00:28:53:01 - 00:28:54:24
It seems wrong

00:28:54:24 - 00:28:58:14
and far too strong to say that, like I have a duty not to.

00:28:58:20 - 00:29:00:00
How dare you

00:29:00:00 - 00:29:03:14
So yeah, I think there's some interesting questions

00:29:03:14 - 00:29:07:19
there about kind of more broadly,

00:29:07:19 - 00:29:12:21
do our actions have to be harmful in order for us to have a duty not to act

00:29:12:21 - 00:29:17:15
in that way or where we kind of contribute to injustice in like more subtle ways?

00:29:18:13 - 00:29:19:04
Yeah, Yeah.

00:29:19:04 - 00:29:22:20
What's our responsibility for not doing that basically?

00:29:22:20 - 00:29:25:16
Really good, good question.

00:29:25:20 - 00:29:30:03
And to end on a lighter note, what's your favourite thing about Wadham?

00:29:31:10 - 00:29:34:08
the people can I say that? you absolutely can.

00:29:34:16 - 00:29:38:17
And yeah, the lovely people of Wadham. Wonderful answer.

00:29:39:00 - 00:29:41:19
And yeah, if people want to get in touch with you

00:29:41:20 - 00:29:47:18
either to chat about your ideas or to reach out to you in your role

00:29:47:18 - 00:29:52:04
as women's officer in the SU how is best for them to do that?

00:29:53:15 - 00:29:55:19
Probably email me.

00:29:55:19 - 00:29:59:14
I mean, my Wadham email’s just my name, or if it was about

00:30:00:05 - 00:30:02:13
SU women's stuff, there's an su.women email.

00:30:03:05 - 00:30:04:05
Yeah. Sure,

00:30:04:05 - 00:30:08:06
I'll include your email in the show notes.

00:30:08:17 - 00:30:09:06
Great.

00:30:09:06 - 00:30:11:18
And congratulations again on winning the essay prize

00:30:11:18 - 00:30:15:16
and thank you for sharing it with the Wadham community.

00:30:15:16 - 00:30:17:15
Thanks for your time. Thanks for having me.

00:30:17:15 - 00:30:19:05
Thank you for listening.

00:30:19:05 - 00:30:21:13
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00:30:21:16 - 00:30:24:06
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00:30:24:24 - 00:30:27:18
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00:30:28:02 - 00:30:31:18
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00:30:31:24 - 00:30:52:22
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