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Virginia Held is an insightful feminist with a healty and revolutionary perspective on women in society. I have encountered many feminists who do not consider love, caring, emotion, etc. female traits. Held seems to assume that these are female traits and that such traits should not be belittled in explaining human morality and behavior. Many feminists (feminist or masculinity) would take a stand more along the lines of "we can do anything a man can do."
There is a massive difference in these positions. While Held believes that fundamentally, morality and human selves have been programmed with a male bias, a bias that stems from males elevating masculine traits and holding feminine traits in scorn, other feminists would seem to agree that the masculine traits are fundamentally of greater value, but that women have been socially pressured to deny or not develop these traits.
I find much merit in Held's argument. Any revaluation and restructuring of ancient social and philosophical assumptions is going to improve those foundations simply because they have been so little challenged in the past -- they have been frozen in time and not dialectically investigated to promote evolution -- especially in the realm of deontological divisions between intellect and emotion, public and private life, etc. The arguments of the other feminists of which I speak, however, seem shallow and misguided.
The very fact that women and men have different hormone make-ups and different genes pretty much assures us that there will be differences between the male and female gender beyond physiology. By embracing the male dominated and biased idea of morality and value, a feminist could only be uselessly swimming against the current. If society is to be changed to be inclusive of women and their experience, it would seem that social definitions need to change, not women themselves.
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