The Association Between Truth And Dare

Abstract:

The formal theory of rational choice as grounded in desire-satisfaction cannot account for the problem of such deformed desires as women's slavish desires. Traditional "informed desire" tests impose conditions of rationality, such as full information and absence of psychoses, but do not exclude deformed desires. I offer a Kantian-inspired addendum to these tests, according to which the very features of deformed desires render them irrational to adopt for an agent who appreciates her equal worth.

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Sandra Bartky has described repressive satisfactions, or, deformed desires, as those that

fasten us to the established order of domination, for the same

system which produces false needs also controls the conditions

under which such needs can be satisfied. "False needs," it might

be ventured, are needs which are produced through indoctrination,

psychological manipulation, and the denial of autonomy; they are

needs whose possession and satisfaction benefit not the subject

who has them but a social order whose interest lies in

domination. (1990, 42)

One feature of deformed desires emerging from this passage is that their source contributes to their deformation. Arguably all desires are formed in a social context; deformed desires are formed by unjust social conditions, including those where men are deemed superior and women inferior (Nussbaum 1999, 149). Jon Elster has defined the "sour grapes" phenomenon to explain how women acquire deformed desires by adaptation to their subordinate state (1987, 109). Just as the fox's conviction that he is not allowed to eat grapes causes him to believe that they are sour and thus prefer not to eat them, women adapt their preferences to a social position that affords them few options. Of course, unjust social conditions do not necessarily issue in deformed desires, but social influences are strong--even some feminists have admitted to having rape fantasies.

Martha Nussbaum has elucidated three general factors present in patriarchy that produce deformed desires and that constitute ways in which women are indoctrinated, manipulated, and denied autonomy: (1) lack of information or false information about fact, (2) lack of reflection or deliberation about norms, and (3) lack of options (Nussbaum 1999, 149). Indoctrination occurs when widely accepted sexual mores and customs, endorsed by the judicial system, instill the myth that women who get raped deserve it because of the clothes they wear, the places they visit, or the times they go out (lack of reflection on norms governing heterosexual behavior, or false information about "women's nature"). Manipulation occurs when the media pressure women to be feminine at the expense of developing their intellectual capacities (lack of options). Denial of autonomy occurs when a person loses her capacity for self-directedness or self-authorship over her life. It often goes hand-in-hand with lack of options, as in the case of what Thomas Hill has called the Deferential Wife (Hill 1995), who believes that a woman's proper role is to serve her family. There need not be an identifiable person or group that intentionally manipulates, distorts facts, or holds back information; these more subtle forms of coercion systematically deform women's desires.

A second feature from Bartky's passage is that deformed desires benefit not their bearers, but the privileged and patriarchy itself. Admittedly, this seems odd, since typically when one desires something, one believes that satisfying this desire will benefit one. But beliefs about such expected benefits sometimes do not square with the harms that result from satisfying one's desires--slavish values aim only at satisfying another, typically to the disadvantage of the "slave" (MacIntosh 1995). Such is the case when women lose themselves in caring for others (Hampton 1993), or when they desire to conform to the fashion-beauty complex that leaves them with an inferior image of their bodies, unnecessarily demands their time and money, pits them against other women, and keeps them out of jobs they rightly deserve (Bartky 1990; Wolf 1992).

We can attribute women's belief that they benefit from the satisfaction of their deformed desires to their being deceived about the benefits they or women as a group receive by deformed desire-satisfaction. Deception explains the insidiousness of deformed desires--it causes the nonprivileged to contribute to their own maltreatment. Indeed, they must be convinced that their subordination is self-beneficial, otherwise they would aim to rid themselves of deformed desires. Admittedly, women do benefit from conformity stemming from deformed desires: many feel good conforming to the fashion-beauty complex, conformists avoid hassle and are more easily promoted than their "rebel" sisters, and those who play out "feminine" roles often "catch" a man. But these benefits are at best short-term and short-sighted: the fashion-conscious woman wastes a lot of time and money and may even damage her health, the conformist usually does not get to the top or does so by leaving intact a sexist system that perpetuates sexist stereotypes which harm all women, and the partnered woman often is expected to conform to autonomy-denying, "feminine" roles, or even worse, suffers abuse. Women are deceived, then, about there being no more to the story of desire-satisfaction than receiving the "false benefits" of conformity, and about the real harms of oppression they incur from deformed desire-satisfaction.

A fourth feature Bartky does not mention is that deformed desires often conflict with the person's own desire to promote her welfare. Lois Pineau (1989, 239) and Catharine MacKinnon (1987; 54, 114, 180, 194) suggest that, deep down, despite patriarchy's influence on their desires, all but the complete dupes of patriarchy really do care about their welfare. Such women have a confused desire set, one that is not, after all, entirely at odds with their welfare, objectively determined. Preferring at once what is in one's own welfare and bad for one is inconsistent, but women's preferences can take more tangential routes either toward or away from their own good. Ann Cudd's explanation of the phenomenon of conflicting desires is that women do not come to prefer