Championing Equality For All
What I read: John Stuart Mill’s Philosophy of Equality on Farnam Street Blog.
Philosopher John Stuart Mill (March 20, 1806 – May 7, 1873) was ahead of his time. I find him a particularly fascinating character because he staked a claim to ideas that were far more progressive than most of his contemporaries. Indeed, Mill was at the time considered one of the most influential thinkers of classical liberalism, a political ideology and a branch of liberalism that advocates civil liberties under the rule of law.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, a site everyone interested in philosophy should bookmark and revisit frequently, offers this about Mill.
John Stuart Mill (1806–73) was the most influential English language philosopher of the nineteenth century. He was a naturalist, a utilitarian, and a liberal, whose work explores the consequences of a thoroughgoing empiricist outlook. In doing so, he sought to combine the best of eighteenth-century Enlightenment thinking with newly emerging currents of nineteenth-century Romantic and historical philosophy. His most important works include System of Logic (1843), On Liberty (1859), Utilitarianism (1861) and An Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy (1865).
Among the liberal ideas Mill espoused was the inherent equality of women. He understood the importance of equality for everyone while many other philosophers of his day were comfortable challenging or avoiding the topic altogether.
One must remember that at the time Mill published his 1869 text, The Subjection of Women, women were still essentially considered the legal property of their fathers and husbands with no substantive civil rights. For Mill to declare equality for the sexes was tantamount to blasphemy, but he bravely suggested such equal treatment was morally and practically correct.
When Mill published his text, women were discriminated against and subjugated more than they are today in more enlightened cultures across the globe. There was often little debate about the inequality of the sexes. It was one of those “that’s just the natural order of things” positions that served men and their need for control.
Some regions of the world have become better at seeing the wrongs of inequality between men and women, but sadly others have doubled down on treating woman as chattel. Two steps forward, one step back.
Today many of us rightfully argue for the equality of all human beings regardless of their gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, color, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or non-faith, and so on. No, not everyone argues for these things, but among progressive and moral thinkers it’s understood that every person walking the face of the earth deserves equal treatment under the law.
Cultures and their legal systems should accept and celebrate the entire range of diversity among the human experience. I still have hope the day will come when this is true, both here in my own country and throughout the world. We’re not there yet. We have a long way to go. That’s partly why Mill’s work is so engaging even today. His arguments for the full acceptance of women on equal footing with men can be applied to the entire spectrum of equality issues among all people.
Mill was specifically addressing the equality of women in relation to men, but his reasoning as to why equality is desirable transcends that one case. Because his argument rests on the social cost of inequality, a modern reading of his text is easily reframed as “the subjection of people.” Even if that was not his initial intent, we can use our current understanding to adapt his ideas.
Today we are struggling with so many issues for which the basic decency of equality is the cornerstone guiding light: racial inequities, LGBTQ discrimination, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and yes, the mistreatment of women as second-class citizens whether through laws that govern agency over their own bodies or the corporate glass ceiling that has yet to be adequately shattered. Religions from mainstream to extremely radical are often founded on the assumed superiority of men over women. Our country is currently dealing with a polarized political landscape in which one side has cynically decided that reinforcing inequality is their policy platform of choice to maintain and gain power. This poses a dangerous situation for the integrity and functioning of our democracy.
Mill’s argument for equality approaches from a slightly different perspective than many do today. Rather than focusing entirely on the innate nature of equality, he puts forth the notion that society loses out on important contributions that everyone can offer by dismissing women from full engagement. Mill believed that equality of the sexes was critical for solving the world’s problems because then everyone can decide how they can best contribute to society.
That same reasoning supports equality for any segment of humanity. Discounting any group of people inevitably leads to a loss of the valuable contributions they can otherwise offer to us all.
Apart from the egalitarian perspective that believes in the worth of ubiquitous social equality, perhaps there is useful weight to the argument that it’s in everyone’s best collective interest to encourage diverse inputs of thought and action to improve everyone’s lives.
He argued that we need to give people a choice as to how they will best contribute to society. If we don’t, we prevent ourselves from accessing the best ideas and contributions. Humans face enough natural challenges, Mill thought, that to cut ourselves off from any part of the available pool of brainpower costs society timely and insightful solutions to our problems—solutions that may be better than the existing ones. People need to have equal freedom to choose the paths that they want to pursue.
That Mill focused on the utility of equality rather than its inherent goodness and righteousness made me wonder if that argument might fly today. As we work toward equality for all of humanity, might the powerful who would otherwise shun the entertaining of equality as a natural right instead be swayed by the notion that the more heads in the game the better the ideas and solutions that result.
Part of Mill’s reasoning was that lacking the opinions and feelings of women, along with any ideas or skills they might offer society, led to an incomplete understanding of that half of humankind.
He observed that the lack of testimony and perspective of women in both history and contemporary society, as well as the lack of access to education to enable them to contribute, meant that men’s general understanding of them was weak at best. Most men derived their opinion of women based on their feelings about the women with whom they had direct contact and the opinions of other men. “Accordingly, one can, to an almost laughable degree,” Mill wrote, “infer what a man’s wife is like from his opinions about women in general.”
Take this same line of thinking and apply it to every marginalized group. Lacking a women’s perspective of course lessens all of us, but so does the minimization of contributions by people of color, LGBTQ people, immigrants, Muslims, and any of a plethora of categorizations. Rather than a world of separate nations, cultures, and subcultures, it is best if we think of everyone as an important ingredient in the sumptuous stew that is new knowledge, optimal governance, and benefits we can all share.
The precarious situation everyone in this country who is not a white heterosexual Christian male finds themselves is encapsulated in this from the article.
For women, it is a catch-22. You must be what you are expected to be in order to be seen, but then you are seen only for what has been culturally prescribed.
Certainly a catch-22 for women, but this is the same predicament every marginalized group find themselves operating under. Play the game, stay in your lane, and don’t rock the boat and you’ll perhaps be seen, but then you are seen only as has been deemed your lot in life by those who seek to continue to exert control. White supremacy. Anti-choice. Inequity of pay. Homophobia. Transphobia. Xenophobia. Voter suppression. The list is endless of the ways in which the entrenched powerful want to keep so many others under their boot.
When anyone asks me why I consider so valuable the literature, writings, films, and other cultural megaphone vehicles for feminists, queer activists, Black Lives Matter organizers, and others who champion civil rights and equality, it’s because of the need to halt the pervasive stereotypes and discriminatory feedback loops. We need to change the cultural narrative to lay the groundwork for change. Much as women in Mill’s era could only express those opinions that men would support, the same happens with every marginalized sector feeling there is always a price to pay for voicing an opinion, or claiming a right, that defies the prevailing views of those in power.
When we don’t organize society on the premise of equality, we miss opportunities for improvement and development. We hold everyone back.
Whether it’s white supremacy, Christian fundamentalism, or any sort of institution that proclaims their kind to inherently possess more rights and freedoms than others, it’s often founded upon a “that’s the natural order of things” delusion.
It is an argument we have all heard time and time again: because the inequality is assumed to be just the way things are, the power difference must be normal as well. Mill exposes the fallacy in this type of thinking when he asks, “But was there ever any domination which did not appear natural to those who possessed it?” The exercise of power by one group over another certainly does not feel natural to those who are being dominated, even if they may have internalized the same oppressive beliefs about themselves.
As an older gay man, I have heard my entire life from discriminatory factions that my “lifestyle” (it’s not a lifestyle) is morally wrong because that’s just the way it is. Women hear from some men (and misogynistic women) that men should naturally be in power because that’s just the way it is. White supremacists want us to believe their skin color somehow bestows upon them the right to control or even terrorize people of color.
There is always a powerbase of people who want to squelch and trample the rights of others so they can remain in power or not challenge their self-centered worldview. All of them are wrong of course. Decent people know this. But the systemic nature of inequity is such that the more subtle manifestations of discrimination and marginalization often go unnoticed until the underlying hate or bigotry is demonstrated in some extreme, radical manner. It’s all bad. The subtle, systemic stuff. The overt, hate-fueled stuff. It’s all built on a house of phobic and power-hungry cards that must be toppled if our world is to survive and thrive for everyone.
Mill argued that “it is perfectly obvious that the abuse of the power cannot be very much checked while the power remains.” It is very unlikely that people who have power are inclined to give it up. In order to justify power accorded solely because of who you happen to be born as, the power must be conceived of as earned.
It’s often a case of making up arguments in order to justify the status quo, rather than deciding on a status quo based on objective observation and evidence.
It is ultimately in everyone’s best interests to foster equality and acceptance.
According to Mill, liberty is the goal. His idea of liberty is incompatible with systemic inequality. To legislate inequality, to make it part of the social fabric, has two problematic effects. First, those who are considered “less than” cannot have liberty. But those who run the show do not have liberty either, because of the effort required to maintain inequality.
It would be comical were it not so horrendous that some people believe they are better than others simply by the accident of their birth. One’s skin color, origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, and even religion to a certain extent are subject to the whims of birth. There is no logical reason to attach rights to the happenstance of birth except that it’s seen to serve the needs of the powerful and wealthy. However, based on Mill’s utility argument there is a strong case to be made that such power-hungry stances on the human condition hurt even the powerful and wealthy in the long run.
I’ll leave you with the final paragraph of the article, which is truly excellent, and I recommend you read it.
Mill suggests that “the legal subordination of one sex to the other is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement.” Regardless of how we go about promoting equality, it’s important to always remember why equality is desirable. The more equal we are in our freedom to choose how we can contribute to society makes it more likely that the best contributions will be realized.
None of us is free until all of us are free. I genuinely believe this. I might work on certain specific causes such as LGBTQ civil rights, but I do so with the full realization that if inequalities and injustices exist among any group of people, any freedoms I enjoy are blunted by the shackles others endure. This is why allies are so vital.
Let’s all try to create a world where everyone feels they are valued, equal, and can contribute to the betterment of society.