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Murray Hill
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| Self-Knowledge, A Key to Happiness: The Natural Vices of Women | |
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While some readers upon seeing this title will start making their own mental list of feminine vices, others are liable to be taken aback by what appears to be an attempt to denigrate women. The acknowledgment that men have their natural vices as well still leaves one with the question of whether the notion of natural vice can be more than a stereotype. Thus, the first part of this paper will discuss the existence and nature of natural vice, along with the utility of speaking about it. This discussion will make it clear that knowledge of one's natural vices is a key to becoming a fulfilled and happy person. The second part of this paper will discuss in detail the natural vices of women, so as to provide members of the female sex a practical guide to becoming better persons. It is a matter of experience that natural vices do in fact exist. Authors through the ages attest to their existence. For example, the novelist P.D. James notes:
In ancient times, Aristotle spoke about natural vice in his Nicomachean Ethics. In the medieval period, Thomas Aquinas took up the same theme, and this is what he says about natural vice in his commentary on Aristotle:
Natural virtue and natural vice are inborn inclinations to true virtue and true vice, respectively. Some children are naturally brave, while others are timid and cowardly; some are naturally honest, while others appear to be born liars. The difference between natural virtue and vice and true virtue and vice is that the latter depend on our free choices, whereas the former are a result of one's physical constitution. These truths have both a down side and an up side. The bad news is that possessing natural virtue is not as good as it sounds. For when someone has a natural tendency they tend to act or react a certain way even when it is not appropriate. E.g., a child who is naturally fearless will tend not to exercise caution when it is called for. The good news is that possessing a natural vice is also not as bad it sounds. There is hope for kids who put salt on snails or pull heads off of dolls. A tendency is not the same thing as a choice. To feel like bullying someone is not the same as choosing to bully someone. Nor is to feel like bullying someone the same as choosing to approve that feeling. We can make choices not only about the way we act, but also about the way we feel (one can fuel feelings of hatred or check them). The very point of this paper is that by having self-knowledge of our natural tendencies we can make better choices, giving direction to our tendencies instead of letting them direct us. Aristotle raises the issue of natural vice in the content of a discussion of what one should do in order to acquire moral virtue. He gives three pieces of advice, two of which are relevant for our purposes. Basing himself on the notion that virtue lies in the mean (e.g., generosity lies between the vices of stinginess and profligacy), Aristotle recommends that we aim for the extreme that we as individuals are less inclined towards. Aristotle is thus acknowledging here that different individuals have different natural inclinations. 3 Some individuals may be inclined to be cheap, and others spendthrift. Those who tend to be cheap should try to act like spendthrifts, and vice versa. Aristotle's second piece of advice is that we should be on our guard against being swayed by pleasure. One could say that this is the natural vice of common to most humans; as sensitive beings, we all tend to pursue pleasure and to follow the path of least resistance. Individual natural vices are due to the individual's particular physical make-up. Our "common" natural vice, the pursuit of pleasure, follows upon our make-up as animals. We are all endowed with the sense of touch, and consequently experience pleasure and pain, feelings necessary for our survival (imagine if we did not feel pain when we touched a hot stove or if we never felt hungry). Now, intermediary between our individual constitution and the constitution we all share insofar as we are animals is the constitution that we share in common with the other members of the sex that we belong to. This would include things such as the same reproductive organs, secondary sexual characteristics, hormones, brain structure, metabolism of alcohol, etc. One would expect then that in addition to individual natural vices and the quasi-universal natural vice of pursuing pleasure, there would be natural vices that were due to one's sex. A clear example of a natural vice of this sort is female irritability during portions of her menstrual cycle. One might rightly point out that not all women are like that. Indeed, and I am not even sure that even the majority are. Still there exists a type of irritability which is directly tied to physiological changes that men do not experience. To call something a natural vice of women does not always mean that all or even most women suffer from that bad tendency. It may simply mean that it is more prevalent in women than in men. For example, women, taken as a group, tend to be more passive than men are, but when one compares one woman with another, they lie along a range from passive to aggressive rather than being bunched up exclusively at the passive extreme. This is not surprising since sexual characteristics such as hormone production vary from one individual to another. Moreover, a certain number of women may lack a given natural female vice because it was canceled out by their individual natural virtue. Again, natural vice can be overcome by repeatedly choosing not to go along with it. In those women who are truly virtuous, any obvious traces of natural vice may have been extinguished. I will now proceed to delineate the principal natural vices of women. It should be clear that just as knowing one's individual natural vices allows one to steer clear of acting in accord with them, so too knowing the natural vices of one's sex can help one avoid succumbing to their pull. In order to insure a systematic treatment of these vices, I need some way of grouping them. Since vices are always opposed to some virtue, I will use the traditional division of the four cardinal virtues (courage, temperance, justice, and prudence) as a means of exhaustively identifying the natural vices. I will also make use of the distinction of vices according to thought, word, and deed. Before I begin, let me clarify how I intend to use examples here. It would be a logical mistake to generalize on the basis of a single example. Thus, when I give an example, I am not suggesting that one can conclude from it alone that women in general tend to be that way. Rather, I am suggesting that the behavior exemplified can be readily recognized as more characteristic of women. In other words, the examples I give are of such a sort that if one reflects on one's own experience, it should be the case that one can more readily recall cases when women have acted that way than when men have acted that way.
One aspect of the cardinal virtue of courage is to hit the mean in regard to confidence. It is more typical of women than men to fall short when it comes to self-confidence. Women are prone to the "doormat syndrome," putting up with all sorts of unacceptable behavior from their boyfriends or spouses for fear of losing them. They lack the confidence that if they let go of unsuitable boyfriends or separated themselves from abusive spouses, they could not survive alone. As a consequence they are too patient. As St. John Chrysostom points out:
Put in more contemporary terms, being too patient "enables" others to continue along their road to self-destruction. 5 I think that part of the much talked about problem of "lack of self-esteem" amounts to a lack of self-confidence. It's a good question whether women's tendency to lack self-esteem is cultural or natural or both. In a society where women have to far outperform men in order to get recognition, it is not surprising that women would lack self-esteem - they are never or rarely good enough. Social factors also provide the more likely explanation for why women in present-day American society tend to think that they are overweight when they are not, while men who are overweight tend to think that they are just fine. It is likely that the present cultural obsession with female slenderness is a cause of women's poor self-image. In other cases, it is harder to determine whether women's lack of self-confidence is due to social factors, and not to nature. Julia Child observes that the biggest difference between the way men and women cook is that: "Men are much more casual, much more devil-may-care. And very often women are afraid to make a mistake. They're tentative." 5 In general, women do not like to guess, whereas men have relatively little reluctance in doing so. Are these difference due to culture or are they innate, or both? Another thing that seems indicative of women's lack of self-confidence is the higher incidence of depression in women. Self-confident people have a positive attitude and do not yield to despair in the face of things that tend to make people despondent. Instead of lamenting their problems, they strive to solve them and/or they set for themselves new goals and pursue them. Again, one might say the feminine lack of confidence is due, at least in part, to society which teaches women not to show initiative. But perhaps it is natural, or due to some combination of nature and nurture. Although culture in some cases may offer the plausible explanation for why women suffer more often from lack of self-confidence than men, I do not think that it does in all cases. Consider how men will only ask for directions as a last resort (if they don't just give up instead), whereas women have no problem asking. Or consider how boys tend to learn as opposed to how girls tend to learn. Boys tend to try things themselves, whereas girls tend to listen to others. A girl asks: "What will happen if I drink X or do Y?", whereas a boy just goes ahead and does it. Women are far less reluctant to consult a marriage counselor than men are. Things like this show that women more naturally rely on others, and men are more self-reliant. And this makes sense if one thinks of early human history. Men, being physically stronger, were the hunters and they were the protectors of women. If a man was timid he wasn't going to be a successful hunter or be able to protect a woman from animals and other men. So either he would starve or no woman would have him or his children would starve, and thus he wouldn't pass on his genes, or at least would not do so as successfully as a more confident man would. Women, on the other hand, were dependent upon men in said ways, and if they were short on self-confidence, it did not affect their survival or ability to find a mate. Indeed, there is at least circumstantial evidence that women who are trusting are more desirable to men. Men have a very strong desire to be trusted. According to John Gray, author of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, trust is the number one thing a man desires in a relationship. Moreover, if one asks people what they would consider natural faults of women, a common response is that they tend to be gullible and too trusting. It appears to be natural, then, that women are less self-reliant. Women have to learn to stand up for themselves. The single woman who gives in to a man's demands before marriage is begging for poor treatment later on as he may realize that she is more attached to him that he to her, and that he can treat her poorly and she'll still stick around. At the workplace too a woman stands to gain by demanding respect. One young woman hired as personal assistant to a corporate executive told him after a few days that if he did not stop using bad language, she was going to look for another job. Despite the fact that use of profanity was a way of life for him, he stopped using it in her presence. Rather than being fired, her no-nonsense demand earned his respect. If he hadn't stopped, she had the self-confidence to seek work elsewhere.
I will begin by considering temperance in the strict sense. When it comes to food women are perhaps somewhat more prone to excess. This is suggested by the fact that in most cultures overweight women are more numerous than overweight men. However, this could in part be due to the fact that women often have more access to food (often being the ones who prepare it). Also, women are faced with having to lose weight after childbirth. Thus, it doesn’t seem to me that there is clear cut evidence that women are significantly more prone to gluttony than men are. When it comes to drinking, men are more prone to excess. And men are more prone to sexual excess--witness pornography and prostitution. When it comes to other creature comforts, however, women do appear to be more prone to pampering themselves. They are more likely to want the fancy bathroom with the big bathtub, and to have someone do their nails or give them a massage. There is absolutely nothing wrong with these things, and indeed the relaxation they afford may contribute to their being kinder and better tempered. Still, women more than men do tend to spend too much time or too much money on these sorts of things. (This is not to deny that an excess desire for such things is often checked by a woman's tendency to neglect her own wants and needs in order to care for others.) Having considered temperance it the strict sense, it remains to consider temperance in the broad sense. (Again, temperance in the broad sense comes into play when there is a need to exercise moderation.) I will begin by considering anger and aggressivity. Women are prone to get angry about things others do that are of little or no moral consequence. Women on the whole are more observant of details than men, and so it is not surprising that they tend to get hung up on details and lose sight of the big picture. They get angry when someone forgets their birthday or fails to notice their new haircut. They make a fuss about a cluttered desk or about a coffee cup that never finds its way into the sink. They are more likely to bicker than men are. In general, men are the ones who have the more serious problems with controlling aggressivity and anger, as their record of violent crime attests. However, in certain circumstances, women seem even more capable of excess. "There is no fury like that of a woman scorned" (except maybe that of a woman whose loved one has been injured or killed by someone). Witness the angry Herodias asking for John the Baptist's head on a platter. That women tend to be more vindictive than men also finds support in the fact that women in general tend to lack objectivity (as will be discussed later in this paper). In addition to anger, another thing which we must restrain is pride. Pride can be defined as an inordinate appetite for our own excellence. It seems that as men more often seek to excel others in virtue of their activity, women more often seek to excel others in virtue of their passivity. Women undergo things that they really need not undergo in order to stand out from the rest. For example, some women will insist on having their children without an epidural chiefly so that they can brag about it. Others have more children than they want (or can handle), and then play the martyr. It is almost exclusively women who congratulate themselves for putting up with a lot. Men congratulate themselves on what they have accomplished. As noted above, putting up with things that one should not put up with is vice, not virtue, and to regard such behavior as putting one on a higher level than others is doubly wrong. A more superficial form of female pride is vanity. This is quite natural since female beauty is for better or worse an important factor in a man's choice of his spouse. Female vanity and/or the desire to attract a spouse explains why women tend to have difficulties in showing restraint concerning dress, hair, and jewelry. Some women dress provocatively (i.e., in such a way as is apt to incite lust) and/or spend an inordinate amount of time and/or money shopping for clothes, having one's hair done, etc. This is not to say that one should not be concerned with one’s appearance, in fact, this is a positive good if not carried to excess.
The natural vices of women when it comes to prudence seem to lie chiefly in three areas: First, women tend to lack caution or to be gullible. Secondly, they have a harder time in being objective in their judgments concerning loved ones, and thus tend to be unreasonable. They also have the related tendency of not following through on their judgments when doing so comes in conflict with pleasing people. Thirdly, they tend to be unreasonable because they get too hung up on details. The feminine eye for detail can be conducive to prudence insofar as women are perceptive of circumstances which impact on the appropriateness of a given action--circumstances that men tend to overlook. However, sometimes the eye for detail results in missing the big picture. As for female gullibility: Women are the preferred victim of con artists. This seems to be due to it being easier to manipulate a woman's emotions thus clouding her judgment. Women more than men vote on the basis of the personality of the candidate, rather than on what the candidate stands for. This also seems to be due to their natural tendency to be trusting. Women more than men are liable to fall for a line like "I want you to be the mother of my children." They are more likely to fall in love with some guy on the internet and get themselves into trouble. Female gullibility also takes another form: Women are more likely to buy into superstition: horoscopes, fortune tellers, New Age beliefs, fad diets, etc. When I think I've heard it all a successful business woman will tell me about hanging up a mirror to ward off the "killing energy" coming from a street lamp in front of the house. When the superstitious beliefs are traditional, women are all the more susceptible to them (e.g., some groups traditionally put a necklace around a baby's neck, supposedly to alleviate the pain of teething). This sort of gullibility seems in some cases due to the tendency to depend on others (tradition is some thing passed on by others). In other cases it does not seem due to natural vice, but rather to a lack of common sense. (Note that when people make poor decisions due to lack of common sense, they are not morally at fault, except if they should have known to consult with someone who has more sense.) The claim that women tend to be gullible appears to run counter to the common view of women as being shrewd. These two perceptions are not really in conflict. Women often show a lot of ingenuity (or are calculating) when it comes to figuring out means to a goal that they set for themselves, so long as doing so falls within a sphere that they are familiar with. It is when it comes to taking in information falling outside of their immediate sphere of experience that their tendency to swallow too readily what others tell them comes into play. The other weakness that women have when it comes to prudence is that they tend to let emotional attachment to people blind their judgment and they tend to be conciliatory to the point of compromising principle. C.S. Lewis makes the point that it is common knowledge that women are less objective than men by first having you imagine a scenario in which you have discovered that your son has just beaten up your neighbor's son. He then asks: Would you like to speak to the boy's father or to his mother about the incident? A real-life incident similar to Lewis's scenario occurred during a dinner party discussion I was having with a man. He and I were going back and forth in an impassioned manner when all of a sudden his wife burst into tears. She was upset because she thought that I was attacking her husband. He, on the other hand, did not think for a moment that because I was attacking his arguments, that I was attacking him. Women's lack of objectivity can also be seen from the fact that they are more likely to let pity for a person block out evidence that the person is untrustworthy or guilty. They are the ones who are more likely to look for some excuse for a criminal, such as his coming from a broken home. Although it is of course right to take into account mitigating factors, women will sometimes regard mitigating factors as exonerating a person from all guilt. Not only do women's positive feelings (love, compassion, etc.) tend to bias their judgment, their negative feelings also exercise more sway over their judgment than is the case with men. Female managers tend to get more personal when there is a conflict with an employee. They can take a disliking to one for some small thing one has done or for some minor criticism one has leveled against them, and never let it go. Men tend to be more impersonal, and thus tend to be more even-handed and fair. Not only do women's moral judgments tend to get skewed because of their feelings towards people, they tend to be less principled than men. Although men may not act in accord with their principles, they do not dismiss the principles themselves in determining what they should do. Women are more willing to compromise or sacrifice their very principles for the sake of a loved one or for the sake of meeting the other half-way. One striking example of this was an article featuring two women, one who was against abortion, and one who was for it. Sister X was a self-professed proponent of the pro-life position. However, she was quite happy to share with the reader an incident in which she brought a young woman with a problem pregnancy to an abortion clinic. She felt that it was the compassionate thing to do in the circumstance. Sister X's actual behavior and subsequent attitude reveals that for all practical purposes, she had disregarded her pro-life position, and showed no qualms in doing so. Another incident where one can see women backing a way from principle would almost be funny:
Women’s greater willingness to jettison principle is witnessed to by the fact that women less often than men will stay in a marriage once they feel the love is gone. In literature too one finds women portrayed as the less principled sex. In The Third Man by Graham Greene a man is discovered to have adulterated penicillin, resulting in some children becoming insane, and others dying. An old male friend of his finds this out, as does his female friend and mistress. When it is a question of drawing this man out of hiding, the male friend sets aside his strong feelings of attachment to his friend and acquiesces to serving as "bait," whereas the female friend refuses: "'I loved a man,' she said. 'I told you - a man doesn't alter because you find out more about him. He's still the same man.'" 9 The third problem that women have when it comes to making good judgments about moral matters is that they get too hung up on detail. Women more than men end up wasting a lot of time and energy in a type of perfectionism that leads nowhere. Women more than men are compulsive organizers. They also more often make much of a small mistake or flaw. Women’s comments such as: "How can you be Asian and not know how to cook rice?" (repeated several times during the course of a dinner) or "She doesn't know how to use make-up" (after a dinner conversation with a husband’s female colleague) are representative of pettiness stemming from attention to detail.
Women tend to use speech not only as a means to deceive and manipulate, but in many other destructive ways as well. Hurtful words substitute for blows, and nagging and shouting takes the place of physical threat. The simple fact that women tend to talk more than men provides them with more occasions to commit faults "in word." These vices include: idle talk, gossip, cattiness, and detraction (destroying a person's reputation). In addition to being prone to vices in word, women are also prone to injustice in thought, namely, to envy. Envy is a vice of the weak. It is a person who does not have a life who is sorry to see others doing well. Men being more aggressive and more confident are less likely to envy others' accomplishments because they feel either that they will soon accomplish just as much or that their accomplishments are in nowise inferior to others. Envy is often at the root of negative comments women make about others. People who are secure and happy with their lives do not feel a need to carp on the imperfections of others. What about women's reputation as seductresses? The natural desire of woman as woman is to find a husband and start a family. This does lead some women to adopt underhanded means for doing so. Immodesty is one such means, as it taps into the male's purely animal nature, while disregarding that woman is meant to be a companion for man rather than merely satisfaction for his lust. A woman is less likely to seduce a man for the sake of sensuality, and is more likely to do so in order to get or keep a man, to feel loved, or to boost her vanity. A final virtue to consider in this discussion of the natural vices opposed to justice, is one that goes beyond simple justice, namely, generosity. Women tend to be less generous with money than men, and this even when one takes in account that in many cases they simply have less to give. At least this is so when it comes to tipping; perhaps it is not the case when it comes to charitable donations. To the extent that women do tend to be stingy, this tendency generally stems from the fact that they are the ones that make the essential expenditures in a family; they are the ones that immediately see that the family is fed and clothed. A man is much more likely to adopt an easy-come, easy-go attitude. (Women do, however, tend to be more generous than men with their time, for example, when it comes to doing volunteer work.) I do not pretend to have exhaustively listed every feminine natural vice, but only most of the main ones. This list is useful for discovering one's weaknesses. Awareness of one's untoward tendencies can help one prepare oneself for situations where one is likely to go wrong (forewarned is forearmed). The general antidote for vice is to aim for the other extreme (e.g., if one tends to be too timid, try to be forward; if one tends talk too much, make a conscious effort to talk less than everyone else one is with). There are more specific remedies for certain vices, but space does not allow us to go into them here. Also helpful for ridding oneself of a vice is understanding its root cause, and understanding how it is reinforced by other vices. This paper did not systematically examine these matters, though it has left clues here and there. (For example, it is readily gathered from what was said that it would be hard to entirely eliminate the vices of envy and gossip without first addressing the problem of lack of self-esteem.) Hopefully I have provided a useful feminine diagnostic guide—for one of the first steps to figuring out the means to achieve moral beauty is to recognize how one falls short of it. _______________________________ 1. First Things, Feb. 2001, 75 (quoting
a Spectator interview). 3. Note: Natural vice is closely related to personality type or temperament. Personality type or temperament names the tendencies that each individual has from birth due to his physical make-up. Natural vice names those of these tendencies that goad people to perform bad acts. It is easy to see then that self-knowledge of the individual tendencies that one has due to temperament is useful for determining what vices one is naturally prone to, e.g., melancholic people are prone to sensuality. This is not to say that there is a one-to-one correspondence between personality type and natural vice. Rather there are a number of natural vices that accompany each personality type, e.g., melancholic individuals tend to be both unfriendly and stubborn. 4. Summa Theologicae, Ed. Instituti Studiorum Medievalium Ottaviensis (Ottawa: Commissio Piana, 1953), II-II, q. 158, art. 7, sed contra. See also In Decem Libros Ethicorum Aristotelis ad Nicomachum Expositio, #805: "Anger is the appetite for redress. It follows therefore that the one who is not angry about things one ought to be angry, does not redress those things which ought to be redressed (or avenged); which is blameworthy." 5. Another difference between men and women which gives men a natural edge in self-confidence over women is that women have a "biological clock" that men do not have, and woman's chances of finding a spouse decreases much more drastically with increasing age than a man's does. For this reason they may be more willing to settle for a man whose behavior leaves much to be desired, or will tolerate a spouse's bad behavior for fear that if they put their foot down, they may be left alone. 6. America West, Oct. 2002, 28. 7. The higher incidence of depression in women may account in part for a somewhat greater tendency to overeating. 8. Imprimis, June 1999, vol. 28, no. 6, 4. 9. Graham Greene, The Third Man (London: Penguin Books, 1977), 87. 10. For example, if a woman is aware that she tends to lack objectivity, she should get in the habit of consulting with someone whose judgment is likely to be unbiased. |