Regents of The University of California Berkeley Journal of Sociology

Male Supremacy and the Narrowing of the Moral Self
Author(s): Michael Schwalbe

Source: Berkeley Journal of Sociology, Vol. 37, The Politics of Identity and Difference
(1992), pp. 29-54
Published by: Regents of the University of California
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Male Supremacy and the Narrowing of the
Moral Self*
Michael Schwalbe
Moral action is never simply a matter of justice reasoning

or abstract philosophizing by autonomous individuals. Outside the
laboratories of psychologists, moral action is a process of negotia-
tion between persons who act based on socially constructed
understandings of themselves, others, and the world. Morality and
moral problem solving are thus matters of social practice and must
be understood sociologically. One matter of particular interest for
sociologists is that of how structural conditions impinge on the
competence and performance of moral actors (Jackall 1988, Wolfe
1989, Schwalbe 1990). In this paper I offer a sociological account of
why one category of moral actors, men, exhibits a consistent failing
vis-a-vis another category, women. My account is informed by
pragmatist ethics and symbolic interactionist social psychology.
Specifically, I draw on the ethical theory and social psychology of
John Dewey ([1908] 1960, Dewey and Tufts [1932] 1985) and G.H.
Mead ([1908] 1964, [1930] 1964, 1934, 1938; see also Broyer 1973).
In this tradition two things are central to understanding

moral problem solving: role taking and the self. Role taking here is
"perspective taking," that is, trying to imagine what an other is
thinking and feeling. This is necessary both to discover the true
nature of the problem and to see how it might be resolved in a way
that best serves the interests and values of all concerned. The self
is important because it is the source of the impulses that motivate
role taking and because it is an object endowed with meanings that
moral actors strive to protect in the face of conflict. What I shall try
to show is how both role taking and the self are affected by social
inequality-in this case male supremacy-such that men are systemat-
ically inhibited from being responsible moral actors vis-a-vis women.
My contention is that male supremacy narrows the moral

selves of men. By male supremacy I mean the materially and
ideologically enforced condition where males are more highly
valued than females, enjoy greater rights to self-determination, and
1 The author would like to thank Maxine Atkinson, Michael Kimmel, Sherryl
Kleinman, Barbara Risman, and Cliff Staples for helpful comments on previous
drafts of this paper.
30 BERKELEY JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
command vastly more institutional power. No modern society has

yet transcended this condition, hence the problem I am describing
is ubiquitous, though variable in its local manifestations. The
concept of a narrow moral self is derived from Mead ([1908] 1964,
1934:379-389). This concept refers to a self that is underdeveloped
in its motivation and ability to role take. I call the narrow moral self
that male supremacy instills in males the masculinist self. While this
self does its greatest harm when men attempt to resolve conflicts
with women, it can also cause men to harm each other.
My analysis is not an indictment of biological males. In fact,

it is my purpose to oppose essentialist thinking regarding gender
and morality, and to put the discussion back on sociological ground.
The ground of the discussion was shifted in the 1980s by claims that
the capacity for child bearing makes women more sensitive to
connections between humans, and thus morally superior to men,
who were sometimes said to be further handicapped by hormonal
inclinations to aggression and brutality. These reductionist claims
ignore tremendous socially-constructed diversity within the catego-
ries of "women" and "men," categories which are themselves
conventional constructions. To understand what members of either
category are motivated and able to do as moral actors requires full
acknowledgement and exploration of how women and men are
products of local social arrangements.
The social-constructionist premises of my argument are

elaborated in the first section below. Following this, I draw on
pragmatist ethical theory and G.H. Mead's social psychology to
show how moral action is related to the self, and how the mascu-
linist self inhibits responsible moral action. These ideas are then
used to develop an interpretation of sexual harassment. Finally, I
describe how the masculinist self can be changed. My hope in this
is to expose the origins of and damage caused by supremacist selves
of all kinds, and to suggest how they can be enlarged to the point
of their own demise.
Engendering the Self
In G.H. Mead's (1934) social psychology "the self is said to

be both subject (i.e., a wellspring of impulses, a source of agency)
and object (i.e., a representation in consciousness, a thing we can
refer to, evaluate, feel about, and act toward). Selves are then
SCHWALBE: MALE SUPREMACY 31
socially constructed in four ways: the actions of others reinforce

certain impulses and extinguish others; the actions of others toward
us tell us what we mean as social objects; others teach us language
and thus give us the ability to create new meanings for ourselves;
and others teach us criteria for evaluating our competence and
worth. When we are infants we are largely at the mercy of the
adults who care for us. As we grow and learn to use language to
think creatively, we develop a greater ability to resist others and to
shape our own development. Even so, our selves continue through-
out life to be affected by others.
The process of gendering the self begins as soon as infants

are inspected and assigned sex category membership. Once an
infant is categorized as male or female, it takes on a specific
meaning for members of the surrounding community, who then act
toward it in different ways based on that meaning. This begins a
process, often occurring beneath conscious awareness, in which the
impulsive behaviors of males and females are responded to
differently. It is this selective reinforcement of impulsive behaviors,
based on sex, that begins to create what we call "boys" and "girls."
The result is that males and females are behaviorally conditioned
to possess different tendencies to act. In this way the self is
gendered right down to its foundation in the body.
My use of the terms male and female is intended to

emphasize that, despite our usual way of speaking, boys and girls
are not born as such but must be created. Selectively reinforcing
impulses based on sex category assignment genders the self as
subject. The self is then also gendered as an object. This means that
children are taught to think of and to identify themselves as either
boys or girls. The acquisition of language is a prerequisite for this,
since it assumes that children are able to apply labels to themselves
and others. Children learn what the labels mean by experiencing
and observing the reactions these labels elicit from others. It is also
of great consequence that children learn that these labels apply to
everyone. Children thus become aware not only of their own gender
identity, but of gender as a master schema for organizing person
perception. Gender identities thus come to be perceived as centrally
defining of who and what people are.
Selves are gendered in yet another way. This occurs in

learning criteria for evaluating one's competence and moral worth.
These standards are often gender specific. In U.S. society, boys are
encouraged to judge their competence by success in competition

with others, and to judge their moral worth in terms of their ability
to live up to an abstract code of honor. Girls are encouraged to
judge their competence by success in meeting the needs of others,
and to judge their moral worth in terms of their ability to care for
others.2 Instilling these distinct criteria for self-evaluation is a
powerful implanting of gender in the individual. Through this
process, others' demands for gender- appropriate behavior become
internal compulsions.
This view does not reduce gender to an attribute of the self.

Gender per se is a matter of stylized social practices that normally
correspond, by convention, to sex category membership (Kessler and
McKenna 1978, Connell 1987). The persistence of these practices,
which serve to reproduce structural inequality between women and
men, depends, however, on the shaping of individual selves.
Engendering the selves of girls/women and boys/men means making
them depend on distinct forms of social practice in order to satisfy
compelling needs for esteem, efficacy, and coherence. It is via the
gendered self that external coercion and internal compulsion are
linked. Our needs for love, inclusion, acceptance, and material
support -- needs which must be met to sustain feelings of esteem,
efficacy, and coherence - are usually met by conforming to the
expectations of others who are similarly bound to gender ideologies
and practices.
In this view we are not mechanically driven by "sex role

expectations." Symbolic interactionism sees humans as reflexive,
creative, and potentially resistant (we are full of conflicting
tendencies to act). Nonetheless, we still seek to satisfy the needs
and desires that have been instilled in us, and this requires
communication and negotiation with others. What is important to
recognize is that the success of this communication and negotiation
often depends on our willingness and ability to properly do gender.
We are thus kept from wholly abandoning the ideologies and social
2 Such generalizations fit reality only loosely, since they ignore local variations
in what boys and girls actually learn about how to evaluate their competence and
moral worth. Nonetheless, the dominant culture of gender in the U.S. can be
safely said to prescribe different criteria of self-evaluation for women and men.
Some empirical evidence for this can be garnered from research on self-esteem
(Schwalbe and Staples 1991) and from various writings on men's lives (see Brod
1987, Kimmel and Messner 1992).
practices of the communities into which we are born, to which we

must adapt, and in which we must survive. Even if we come to
recognize certain ideologies and practices as oppressive and
therefore reject them, it may be extremely difficult to transform the
selves that were shaped, from their inception, by those ideologies
and practices (Fay 1987:143-164).
I want to clarify a few further matters having to do with the

terms male, man, and masculine. All of these terms can be elements
of the self-concept. A male can think of himself as male, as a man,
and as masculine. As meanings applied to the self, "male" and "man"
are identities, while "masculine" is a trait attribution. In our culture,
it is the identity "man" that is most highly valued by biological
males. It is a moral identity that males must earn by engaging in a
form of social practice that is recognized as masculine by some
validating audience. In other words, "masculine" is the name given
to the type of performance that qualifies a male to claim the
identity "man." "Masculin/iy" is an attribute that is then inferred
from a male's stylized social performances.
The point of making these distinctions is to emphasize that

when we speak of "men," we are referring to a category of socially
constructed beings, not to a category of biological beings - despite
the conventional association between the social and biological
categories. Even those who ought to know better often make this
mistake of confusing men, which are products of society, with males,
which are products of nature.
The key implication of all this is that I do not see the

masculinist self, or even the identity "man," as essentially linked to
biological maleness. Biological males can learn to behave in an
unlimited number of culturally stylized ways, not all of which need
have to do with what we think of as gender. In short, the point is
that the masculinist self, which is the bete noire of both this and
other feminist analyses of men's misconduct, is neither universal nor
essential. It is a contingent result of socialization into a particular
form of masculinity in a male supremacist society. I am thus writing
about those males who are transformed into men with masculinist
selves. My contention is that the unreflexive effort to sustain a
masculinist self inhibits a man's ability to act responsibly toward
women.
A Pragmatic View of Moral Problem Solving
Pragmatism takes a mundane view of moral problems,

seeing them as ubiquitous in social life. Moral problems arise both
within and between people whenever interests and values come into
conflict. This happens between people (or between groups of
people) when incompatible goals are sought simultaneously. The
goals need not be sacred or momentous for the conflict to consti-
tute a moral problem. If one person in a room is overly warm and
wishes to open a window, and another person is cold and wishes to
keep it closed, there is the potential for a moral problem to arise.
The point is that the situation encompasses conflicting tendencies
to act, and these must somehow be reconciled if social life is to
proceed.
It is not acceptable, however, to force action to proceed.

Rather, one must find common values in the midst of conflict and
use them as the basis for reorganizing action. What one thus
searches for in trying to solve a moral problem is the way to
proceed that best serves all the interests and values at stake in the
situation. Pragmatists are not relativists in this regard; all values are
not seen as morally equivalent. Values that, if acted upon, would
impede communication and progress toward mutual understanding-
which would be to threaten the social process itself-are rejected.
Proposed solutions to moral problems must therefore be judged not
only by how well they serve stakeholders' immediate values and
interests, but also by how well they serve a transcendent interest in
preserving and improving community life (Dewey [1908] 1960).
Moral problems can also arise when individuals experience

conflicting tendencies to act. These internal conflicts can bring
action to a halt. For action to proceed, these conflicting tendencies
to act must be somehow reconciled. Ideally this involves some new
ordering of values and interests, rather than a forcible overriding of
one set of impulses. Through this process an individual can achieve
greater self-knowledge and potential for self-direction. Forcing
action to proceed by denial and repression simply pushes conflict
deeper into the self and makes self-knowledge harder to achieve.
Moral problems are thus like problems of any kind. They

arise because we try, either individually or collectively, to satisfy
more impulses at once than the environment will allow. When the
environment that resists us is an inanimate one, we think of the

problem as technical (e.g., how to get the computer program to
run). When the resistance comes from other people, we think of the
problem as social or moral (e.g., how to convince an editor to
publish an article written in a particular way). Although there are
many strategies that can be used to solve problems, it was Mead's
insight that in every case we must do at least one thing: take the
perspective of whatever object is resisting us (Mead 1934:354-378).
We usually think of perspective taking with reference to

other people, so it might seem odd to say that we must role take
with inanimate objects. But this is essentially what we do when we
try to determine what the state of an object is, such that it will not
bend to our wishes and allow us to satisfy our impulses. We try, in
other words, to "get inside it" and determine from whence its
resistance arises (Mead 1938:440-441). We do the same thing with
other people. When we encounter resistance we try to imagine how
the other is thinking and feeling such that s/he refuses to do what
we want. Precisely how we do this role taking determines to a large
extent the quality and effectiveness of our moral action.
This analysis thus requires a careful consideration of role

taking. But before doing so, it might be helpful to say more about
the difference between technical and moral problems, as this
distinction will become important later.
When we take the perspective of a resistant inanimate

object, we treat it just so: as an object. We might try to imagine
what it's made of or how it works but we need not concern
ourselves with its thoughts or feelings, since it has none. Its
resistance does not stem from impulses of its own, hence there is no
subjectivity to fathom. People, however, do resist because of
impulses of their own; there is subjectivity to fathom. Now the
problem is no longer a technical one of how to overcome a resistant
object. It is a moral one of how to reach an understanding with
another subject. The kind of role taking necessary to do this, to
fathom and appreciate an other's subjectivity, can be difficult and
risky.
Most analyses of moral reasoning agree about the impor-

tance of role taking (see Kohlberg 1984, Vine 1983, Rest 1986,
Schwalbe 1990). It is certainly of preeminent importance in
pragmatist ethics and symbolic interactionist social psychology. But
role taking, in the context of moral problem solving, is typically seen

as a matter of "taking into account" the interests and values of
others, in a largely analytic way. Or it is seen as a matter of
discerning psychological facts-about others' strengths, weaknesses,
preferences, etc.-that can then be plugged into a formula for justice
reasoning. Based on arguments by Nel Noddings, I have come to
believe that responsible moral problem solving demands something
more.
In her book, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and

Moral Education, Noddings (1985) has sought to develop an ethics
of care. Her arguments about the inherent limitations of ethics
based on universal principles are compelling in their own right and
consistent with pragmatist ethics (Siegfried 1989). Here I draw on
the part of her analysis that concerns the various ways we take
others into account when trying to solve moral problems (Noddings
1985:30-37). My strategy is to reframe her arguments about
empathy and care in terms of role taking. I thus derive from
Noddings a view of role taking as possible to do in three ways: by
projection, by inference, and by receiving the other emotionally.
These might be thought of as strategies for connecting ourselves to
the others with whom we are in conflict.
When we engage in projective role taking we are trying to

determine what the other is thinking or feeling by imaginarily
putting ourselves in the other's place. We are asking ourselves,
"How would I feel if I were in X's shoes?" Using this strategy we
connect with the other by looking at his or her situation and
imagining how it would affect us. Inferential role taking connects us
with others via a different analytic strategy. Here we look for
outward signs of the other's inner state-a frown, a slouch, a
smile-from which we can infer what the other is thinking or feeling.
In either case the goal is to cognitively grasp the other's thoughts
and feelings. Most discussions of the part role taking plays in moral
reasoning emphasize these kinds of analytic role taking (see, for
example, Weinreich-Haste 1983; Kohlberg 1984; Schwalbe 1988a,
1990; cf. Hoffman 1984).
Receptive role taking is different. Here we are not trying to

reason our way to a correct mental picture of the other's inner
state. The goal instead is to feel with the other, to experience what
the other is feeling, to momentarily merge with the other, to
become, as Noddings says, "a duality." What we thus feel is neither
right nor wrong; it is simply the other's feeling. Role taking of this
kind requires a willingness to let the other affect us emotionally, to
not hold the other at a mental distance. In this way the facts of an
other's feelings can become the facts of our own existence, and we
can then give them full weight in our search for a solution to the
moral problem at hand. It is a key point of Noddings's argument
that connecting in this way is necessary to practice an ethic of care.
My view, in accord with Noddings, is that protective or

inferential role taking is a necessary but not sufficient kind of role
taking. Neither of these strategies brings the weight of the other's
experience fully to bear on our moral reasoning. Neither strategy
allows us adequately to experience others as subjects, to fathom
their subjectivity in a way that is essential to responsible moral
problem solving. By projection and inference we can form in our
minds a construct of the other, and it is imperative that we do so;
moral reasoning cannot proceed without such constructs. But we
must do something more, which can be done only via receptive role
taking: form in our bodies the feelings of the other.
Justice is of course better served by purely cognitive role

taking than by no role taking at all. As Kohlberg (1973) has argued,
to find a fair solution to a moral problem it is necessary to role take
to discover the interests that must be balanced against each other.
The difficulty that persists, however, lies in the need to discover also
the weight that must be given to others' feelings. To do this we
must not only project and infer, we must receive and feel with.
Receiving the other emotionally ensures that we will take others'
feelings seriously. When we truly feel with the other we are forced
to reckon with the weight of the other's feelings as equal to our
own. It is this, it seems, that men so often fail to do vis-a-vis
women.
The Self and Moral Action
The self as subject comprises impulses to role take. In

Mead's terms, others are the objects that "answer to" impulses to
role take. The point is that these impulses must be ingrained in the
self in order for role taking to occur. There must also be impulses
present to respond to others as subjects in their own right. The self
must be ready, in other words, to respond to others as partners in
communication rather than as objects whose resistance must be
overcome. The agentic phase of the self of a responsible moral

actor thus predisposes the actor to role take and to appreciate the
subjectivity of others.
The self as object comes into play because we derive a

sense of coherence from the meanings we give to it. In trying to
make sense of the world and our place in it, we become attached to
ideas about who and what we are. Typically we try to act in ways
consistent with these self-conceptions, which may be such that they
either aid or inhibit moral problem solving. For example, seeing
ourselves as honest, compassionate, generous, peaceful, and
committed to justice can be powerful sources of motivation for
moral action. Trying to reaffirm self-conceptions such as these is
likely to produce good results.
But we may also give meanings to ourselves that produce

poor results. It is not that we define ourselves as evil, cruel, greedy,
violent, and unjust and then seek to reaffirm such perverse
self-conceptions, although this may occur in some cases. The
problem, more commonly, is that we try to reaffirm positively
valued self-conceptions but do so in a way that inhibits moral
problem solving. For example, we might strive to preserve concep-
tions of ourselves as rational, independent, strong, and in control.
Acting to reaffirm these self-conceptions would, under many
circumstances, be laudable. But when circumstances call for
openness to the feelings of others, recognition of our dependence
on others, acknowledgement of our weaknesses, and willingness to
relinquish control, then striving to protect these ideas about
ourselves can impede moral action.
Coordinating any kind of action with others requires that

we evaluate our impulses and actions from the perspectives of
others. Some of these others are specific persons whom we know
and whose perspectives we have internalized. But according to
Mead we also create abstract, synthetic perspectives called "general-
ized others," which are elements of the mature self. These are the
perspectives of the groups and communities to which we belong.
Just as we might imagine how a particular other would respond to
a proposed act, so too we might imagine how a group or community
would respond to the act. But here we would imagine it being seen
as good or bad, right or wrong, as bringing consensual praise or
condemnation. When we think in these ways, and adjust our acts
accordingly, we are under the sway of the attitudes predominant in
the groups that have socialized us. The existence of generalized

others in individual consciousness is what makes self control, as
Mead said, social control.
In Mead's view, the self is thus the psychic mechanism that

both makes possible and motivates moral action. It is also a
thoroughly social product. The impulses that constitute the agentic
phase of the self have their origins in the body but are selectively
reinforced throughout a lifetime of interaction with others. In this
way the individual's most basic tendencies to act are socially shaped.
Meanings given to the self as an object are likewise derived from
interaction. By observing how others treat us we learn what
meanings to give to ourselves. And it is through encounters with
others that we form in our minds the abstract perspectives, the
generalized others, that give content to our moral consciousness. In
sum, it is social experience that determines the form and content of
moral selves and what their capacities for moral action will be (see
Schwalbe 1991 for further discussion of the moral self).
The Masculinist Self
In a male supremacist society those born with penises are

given special treatment. This is true in many ways. But what is of
concern here is treatment that affects the development of the moral
self. As per the discussion above, there are four things to consider:
the meanings given to the self as an object, the criteria according to
which the self is evaluated, the impulses embedded in the agentic
phase of the self, and the content of the generalized other. I turn
first to the meanings attached to males as social objects in a male
supremacist society.
Being born male affords a child treatment as a special kind

of social object. To put it bluntly, males are treated as more
important than females. As a male child comes to consciousness of
this, the result is a conception of himself as superior to those who
are not in the category "male." Male children do not have to cloak
this notion in ideology. For them, a multitude of signs convey the
message that if you are male you are simply better; there is no
doubt as to which is the privileged category. Male supremacy is also
reinforced as male children learn that what is said and done by
females can be taken less seriously than what is said and done by
males, who are generally more powerful and dangerous.
Male children also learn that their status within the privi-
leged group is contingent upon continuous identity work. This
means fashioning a self-presentation that others will interpret as
signifying not only maleness but masculinity. Males must therefore
habitualize a manner of self-presentation (or a form of social
practice) which ensures that others define them as boys or men, and
which elicits the imputation of masculinity. Failure to do this means
a loss of power and privilege relative to males who construct and
present more masculine selves. Male-ness is thus only a starting
point; manhood and masculinity must be accomplished in locally
appropriate ways (Kimmel 1987, Gilmore 1990).
Constructing a self of any kind also involves learning how

to evaluate it. In U.S. society the masculinist self is evaluated
according to three principal criteria: its ability to control, its ability
to successfully compete, and its ability to produce. If a male can do
these things, up to prevailing local standards, he can evaluate
himself as entitled to the valued moral identity "man." He can also
expect his claim to the identity "man" to be honored publicly. The
problem here is not with the process of self-evaluation per se, but
with the peculiar standards in effect. Masculinist standards of
self-evaluation lead men to depend on control, competition, and
production as their primary means for maintaining a sense of
efficacy and moral worth, and this has high costs for both men and
women.
My contention is not that control, competition, and produc-

tion are intrinsically bad; indeed, a case could be made that these
things have high survival value for humans. The problem is that the
masculinist self is neurotically dependent for its survival on
gratuitous control, competition, and production, and responsible
moral action suffers because of this. The imperative to deal with
others as subjects whose feelings and desires are no less important
than one's own, and who must be understood and negotiated with,
not tricked or forced into some course of action, cuts off what are
for the masculinist self two primary sources of self-esteem: control-
ling others and outperforming them. The compulsion to produce
may also distract from consideration of others' feelings and foster
a premature leap to instrumental rationality; that is, there may be
a desire to resolve conflict by "fixing things" before understanding
is achieved. In short, because of what the masculinist self needs to
survive, it resists the demands of responsible moral action.
The particular form of masculinist self-evaluation that has

become dominant under the influences of Calvinist Protestantism
and Enlightenment rationalism may undermine responsible moral
action in another way. These historical currents have led to a
condition under which men may evaluate themselves as more
morally worthy to the extent that they repress feelings and act on an
abstract code of honor. Under this condition men seek to affirm
their moral worth by denying what their feelings, or anyone else's,
tell them is right or wrong (Seidler 1991:65-84). The results of this
can be hideous when the code of honor in force includes a prescrip-
tion to obey "legitimate authority," which usually means men with
more institutional power. We thus get men who can derive self-
esteem from resolutely discharging their assigned duties, whatever
those duties might be. Thus during the Gulf War we heard U.S.
soldiers proclaim their pride in doing well the job they had been
assigned, a job that included bombing to death 100,000 human
beings.
A further problem arises because the masculinist self tends

to universalize its peculiar criteria of self-evaluation. In other words,
men with masculinist selves evaluate others according to the same
criteria they apply to themselves. Those who can meet these criteria
are admired and taken seriously; those who cannot are seen as weak
and unworthy of serious consideration. So if women, or other men,
cannot set aside their feelings and do what an abstract code of
honor says is right, then their credibility as moral actors is suspect
in the eyes of men who are imbued with masculinist selves. Men
may thus feel justified in taking women's perspectives and feelings
less seriously when there is conflict to be resolved. To the extent
they do, the receptive role taking necessary for responsible moral
problem solving is once again undermined.
The agentic phase of the masculinist self can inhibit

responsible moral problem solving because of its sheer lack of
impulses for role taking. This is not to say that men imbued with
masculinist selves never take women's perspectives. That would be
impossible; some role taking is necessary for doing anything
together. So even masculinist selves contain impulses to role take.3
3 Many men may also resist role taking vis-a-vis women because the demand
to role take reminds them of their powerlessness in the workplace, where they
must take the perspectives of their bosses in order to avoid trouble (see Schwalbe
1986:92-98, 130-135; 1988b). Many men may thus experience role taking as an act
My contention is that these are impulses to engage in projective and

inferential but not receptive role taking. Thus while the masculinist
self contains impulses to role take in the ways necessary to over-
come women's resistance as objects, it lacks impulses to role take
in the way necessary to receive their feelings as subjects. The
masculinist self is equipped, in other words, to deal with women as
sources of technical rather than moral problems.
It is not just that male privilege disinclines men to engage

in receptive role taking vis-a-vis women. It is that, as with relin-
quishing control, this kind of role taking would threaten the survival
of the masculinist self. This is a self premised not only on dis-identi-
fying with women, and on denying dependence upon them, but also
on remaining insulated from their pain. If this pain were to be fully
felt, its roots in the patterns of domination that sustain masculinist
selves in other ways might become obvious. The pain that men
cause women would then become men's pain and men would be
motivated to destroy the masculinist selves causing it. A suicidal
dilemma is thus avoided by avoiding receptive role taking. An
inevitable by-product is moral irresponsibility in action vis-a-vis
women.
Responsible action is also undermined because of the

generalized others harbored by the masculinist self. In other words,
the group perspectives synthesized within the masculinist self take
male supremacy for granted and define the paramount social reality
as based on the experiences of men (Ferguson 1980:153-176).
Within this reality women are indeed valued-for their capacities to
satisfy impulses; they are also seen as deserving of understanding-
because they can present all sorts of annoying technical problems.
What they are not seen as is subjects whose thoughts and feelings
are of equal value to men's. In fact, masculinist generalized others
can be defined by their inability to bring this possibility into
consciousness. This relative devaluing of women may seldom be
explicitly acknowledged, though it is evidenced continually in word
and deed in ways that the masculinist self, like the proverbial fish
in water, may never perceive.
of submission. In this we see capitalism inflicting upon men a wound that leaves
them unable to be emotionally intimate with others. Perhaps it is the self thus
damaged that many men try to protect by rejecting women's demands for under-
standing.
The origins of masculinist generalized others are not

mysterious; these perspectives are formed through experience in
groups where males and masculinist values are dominant. Without
experience in groups where expressions of male supremacy are
exposed and rejected, no feminist generalized other can be formed.
The masculinist self is thus unable to consider prospective acts from
any perspective that does not make male experience paramount. So
even when sophisticated justice reasoning is brought to bear on
moral problems, the justice sought by the masculinist self is always
within the framework of male supremacy.4 Again, the moral
limitations of the masculinist self can be seen as stemming from its
trained incapacities.
It is not my claim that men per se, or even all forms of

masculinity, are immoral. My point is simply that the masculinist
self, and a form of masculinity premised on compulsions to control,
to compete, and to produce, limit men as moral actors, especially
vis-a-vis women. At the same time I recognize that the masculinist
self, with its desire for autonomy, can produce valuable concerns for
justice, law, and principles of ethical conduct - all of which can
serve to protect individual freedom and preserve civil society. Some
moral goods have thus issued from the masculinist self. The
problem, however, as Gilligan (1982), Noddings (1985), and others
(Tronto 1987) have argued, is that justice, law, and principles of
ethical conduct are not adequate for solving all moral problems. As
humans, most of our moral problems are problems of communica-
tion, understanding, tolerance, and respect for difference. These
require an ethics of care to help us see what our responsibilities are
to others and how to balance them against responsibilities to
ourselves. What I have called the masculinist self is immoral, in this
view, because its existence is premised on not caring about women's
pain. It simply cannot survive the demands of enacting an ethic of
care when trying to resolve conflicts with women.
4 Justice is always specific to a form of life. It necessarily presupposes a

backdrop of values against which judgments of fairness are made. For example,
given the value presumptions of capitalism, workers can be seen as treated justly
even while they are thoroughly exploited (see Neilsen 1988 for a discussion of this
issue in Marxist theory). The same principle applies to serfs under feudalism and
women under patriarchy (cf. Okin 1989). To see the injustice built into a form of
life often requires adopting a perspective that presumes a fundamentally different
set of values.
I want to underscore the sociological nature of this argu-

ment. It is not my contention that men, or at least most men, are
willfully evil beings who conspire to exploit and oppress women. It
is that men are inhibited, by their own power and privilege, from
developing their human capacities to become fully responsible
moral actors, especially in conflicts vis-a-vis women. What I have
tried to show is how a male supremacist society shapes the selves of
men so as to undermine their motivation and ability to act in
morally responsible ways toward women. In such a society men are
socially constructed to see women's pain as less important than their
own, to deny responsibility for it, and to refuse to see it as demand-
ing for its alleviation any radical change on the part of men.
The Example of Sexual Harassment
Some men who foist unwanted sexual attention upon

women may indeed be pathologically egocentric or grossly inept.
But most sexual harassment issues naturally from the masculinist
self and occurs within the bounds of normal behavior as defined by
male supremacy. Much harassment is thus never perceived as such,
nor is its harm evident to those who routinely perpetrate it. This
was dramatically illustrated in the case of Anita Hill's charges of
sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas. Much of what occurred
in the Hill/Thomas case can be interpreted as a result of role taking
failure by men imbued with masculinist selves.
Members of the Senate confirmation panel could not

appreciate, first of all, the profound difference in power between
Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas. As Hill's boss and mentor,
Thomas held enormous power over her career. It should have been
easy enough to take Hill's perspective and understand, if nothing
more, that she valued her career and was therefore reluctant to
publicly accuse Thomas and risk retribution. Yet this seemed to be
impossible for the white male senators to do. Their power and
privilege limited them to rudimentary, projective role taking. At
best they could imagine being offended by persistent, unwanted
sexual overtures. But they could not understand why anyone who
was truly offended would tolerate such overtures for very long,
because that is not what they would do. These wealthy white male
senators could not imagine being relatively powerless and vulnera-
ble, and thus unable to escape a harassing boss. It was hardly
surprising, then, that they doubted Hill's account of Thomas's

behavior.
It was clear also that the senators were unable to appreciate

the complexity of Hill's perspective. She was not just a woman, or
a black woman, but at the same time an ambitious professional,
subordinate employee, and adult sexual being. That this created
within Hill a complex mix of feelings, values, and motives seemed
beyond the senators' grasp. Because of this, they could little
understand the hard choices Hill was forced to make. As a result
the senators, and many similarly handicapped observers, imputed all
manner of twisted motives to her. To the extent that Hill was
understood at all as a woman, it was from the perspective of a
masculinist generalized other. Hill was thus judged as morally
suspect because she did not live up to a traditional feminine code
of honor by valuing her "purity" more than her career. Of course,
if Hill had been a man no such issue would have arisen, since it is
accepted that men must sometimes swallow their pride to achieve
success.
And though it enhanced her credibility with some audienc-

es, the composure Hill exhibited may have hurt her in other ways.
Her lack of emotional display did not give the white male senators
the kind of information they needed to infer what she felt while
being harassed. In fact, this coolness might have led them to infer
that whatever occurred between her and Thomas could not have
been of much consequence. It also allowed the senators to avoid
feeling any of her anguish via receptive role taking. Because such
role taking did not occur, even if the senators believed her charges
to be true, they could not fathom the harm Thomas had done.
Obviously Hill was in a bind, since a more emotional display would
have allowed doubters to invoke the even more damning stereotype
of a hysterical woman. Hill simply could not win in the masculinist
context in which the hearings took place. She had neither the power
to compel role taking, nor the chance to induce it without losing
credibility.
It was clear, however, that the senators were able to take

Thomas's perspective. When Thomas used the lynching metaphor
he invoked a powerful image of black men being brutalized because
of irrational accusations about their sexuality. This was a clever ploy
to exploit white guilt and to create a male bond with the senators.
Thomas's use of the lynching metaphor and his display of anger
allowed the senators both to feel for him and with him. His
performance allowed the senators to engage in projective, inferen-
tial, and receptive role taking all at once. In that moment he
became a fellow man about to be figuratively castrated because of
an irrational accusation (cf. hooks 1992).
The masculinist selves of the white male senators and of

Clarence Thomas provided a basis for connection between them, a
connection that got Thomas a seat on the Supreme Court. These
masculinist selves also made it unlikely that Hill's situation, actions,
and feelings-and the seriousness of Thomas's crime-would be
understood. The Hill/Thomas case revealed what is true in most
cases of sexual harassment. Men typically fail to role take in the
ways necessary to appreciate a woman's feelings of violation and
powerlessness, and her fears of confrontation, retribution, or rape.
Charges of sexual harassment are thus often seen as exaggerated or
as fabricated out of misunderstanding or spite. These ideological
understandings of sexual harassment issue from and serve to protect
the masculinist self.
Expanding the Moral Self
Expanding the moral self means changing it in four ways:

instilling impulses to engage in receptive role taking, attaching new
meanings to it, using different criteria to evaluate it, and incorporat-
ing a feminist generalized other. Expanding the moral self thus
entails creation of a new set of ideas about the self as an object,
and the creation of a new set of impulses to impel a different way
of being. These changes, applied to the masculinist self, in effect
destroy it.
An expanded moral self must include strong impulses to

engage in all kinds of role taking. In terms used in a previous
analysis (Schwalbe 1988a), this means strengthening the "propensity
to role take." But this propensity must now extend to receptive as
well as projective and inferential role taking. This means that
expanding the moral self will predispose men to feel with women
and to give equal weight to their feelings in the face of a moral
problem. Whereas the masculinist self naturally responds to women
as resistant objects that present technical problems, the expanded
moral self responds to women as persons whose subjectivity must be
fathomed and who must be negotiated with as equals. The moral
self is (re)programmed, so to speak, to respond to women in ways

that a masculinist self cannot.
As an object, the expanded moral self is conceived and

evaluated differently from the masculinist self. Though it is
conceived of as strong in many ways, it is not conceived as inherent-
ly superior, in control, strictly rational, or detached. It is conceived
as justice-loving, respectful, compassionate, tolerant, and inter-
-dependent. These are the meanings it becomes important to
reaffirm in action vis-a-vis women. Different criteria are also used
to judge the worth of the self. Self-evaluation is not based on
abilities to control others and to remain emotionally unaffected by
them. The expanded self is instead judged by the strength of its will
to nurture others, to connect with others both intellectually and
emotionally, and to act responsibly in relation to others when hard
conflicts arise.
An expanded moral self also contains feminist others and

a feminist generalized other. The feminist others are the internal-
ized perspectives of specific women; the generalized other is an
abstract, synthetic perspective. What is special about these perspec-
tives is their sensitivity to expressions of male supremacy and the
pain it causes. By adopting these perspectives it becomes possible
to see and respond to expressions of male supremacy in ways that
the masculinist self does not permit. It thus becomes possible to see
more clearly and widely the consequences of proposed solutions to
moral problems. The goal is not simply to become more adept at
anticipating women's objections. It is to truly expand the scope of
moral consciousness by learning to take more, and more diverse,
perspectives into account.
How do masculinist selves begin to grow toward their own

demise? Here I can only suggest a few possibilities. First, an
opening must be somehow created for receptive role taking. I say
that an opening must be created because normally this kind of role
taking is too threatening for the masculinist self. The opening is
most likely to occur when men with a strong sense of justice see
women they love hurt by the unjust and thoughtless acts of other
men (cf. Stoltenberg 1989). In such an instance the legitimacy of the
woman's pain is unquestioned and accepted. But what is also
important is that a man be able to see the pain as stemming from
other men's attempts to preserve their own masculinist selves. That
is the crucial connection. A man must be able to see himself
represented in the act that caused the pain, but only after the pain
is felt and accepted.
What this can do is to pit a man's love for justice and for
a specific woman against his own masculinist self. There is no
guarantee that this will produce a thoroughgoing transformation of
the self. But it can create the tension necessary to start the process.
My point here is that the masculinist self, with its own ingrained
love of justice and desire for women, contains the seeds of its own
destruction.
The idea of an expanded moral self is not merely a fiction

I have invented to aid this discussion. It is a construct for articulat-
ing the experience of many men who are now struggling to over-
come the masculinist selves ingrained in them. Many men have seen
the problems created by masculinist selves: the alienation that arises
when status, power, and wealth are recognized as meaningless goals
for a human life; early disability and death from stress-related
diseases; the inability to maintain satisfying relationships with
women; the loneliness that comes from fear of other men; the
emptiness and lack of energy that come from living an unfeeling
life. I think it is necessary for men to see these problems as
endemic to embracing a masculinist self, and to see an expanded
moral self as the solution.
The growth of the moral self has implications for more than
how men resolve conflicts with women. It also has implications for
how men act toward each other. A greater propensity to engage in
receptive role taking, the embrace of new self definitions and
criteria for self evaluation, and the formation of new internal
perspectives are changes that will inevitably affect all social
relationships. Such changes may lead to the recognition that any
form of domination, whether its victims are women or men, is
immoral. To nurture the growth of the moral self is thus to reject
not only what a male supremacist society has made of us as men,
but also to challenge the inequality that is its basic principle of
organization.
From a pragmatist perspective it is ethically imperative to

work to further the social process. In general terms this means
developing our abilities to role take, to understand others, and to
find the best solutions to moral problems. I have tried to show that
in the context of a male supremacist society this imperative
translates into an imperative to constantly strive to expand the

moral self. To do this is not really a sacrifice; it is a way to discover
what we can be as individuals and as members of peaceful commu-
nities. Only in this way can men discover where their human
interests truly lie, and discover also the kind of society they must
work with women to create in order to realize those interests.
Conclusion
In developing this analysis I have tried to articulate an

aspect of contemporary male experience. Although the terms used
to describe it can vary, the struggle to expand the masculinist self
is a real one. Many profeminist men have recognized the problems
created by their adaptation to a male supremacist society and now,
having rejected male supremacy, are working to transform them-
selves (cf. Seidler 1991). My account of this process tries to show
how inner experience is connected to the structure of social life. It
shows how some men have internalized and are experiencing the
larger struggle between feminism and patriarchy.
The pragmatist ethical theory upon which I have drawn has

advantages for understanding connections between gender and
morality. First, it is more true to the real world in recognizing that
responsible moral problem solving requires ethics of both justice
and care (Bologh 1984, Blum 1988). Pragmatist ethics are anti-
Kantian in arguing against exclusive reliance on abstract principles
of any kind when moral problems arise; situations, and the people
involved, must be dealt with in their particulars. It is indeed
essential to feel with and care for specific persons (Benhabib 1987).
But this is not enough; role taking must also involve a generalized
other, for only by taking the perspective of the community into
account can civil society be maintained. Civil society, albeit
sometimes less than civil, is, in the pragmatist view, a necessary
backdrop for enacting an ethic of care.
To understand the connection between gender and morality

I thus believe it is necessary to recognize the dialectical nature of
moral problem solving, to see that it must alternate between the
ethical poles of justice and care. We cannot care for individuals
without caring for the communities in which they live; and this
requires concern for equity and justice. The self is the balancing
point that determines how we will weight these ethics. Change the
self and the balancing point shifts. What previous analyses have
suggested is that women and men, imbued with different selves,
operate with different balancing points (Gilligan 1982). Pragmatist
ethics, joined to Mead's social psychology, shows us how much more
complex the story is.
The sociological story I have told might be read as "taking

men off the hook," so to speak. It seems to shift responsibility from
the individual man who causes women pain to an abstract "male
supremacist society." In a sense this is true; no one is responsible
for the historical conditions into which s/he is born. But pragmatist
ethics does not obviate individual responsibility for the consequenc-
es of action in the face of moral problems. On the contrary:
individuals are expected to question the adequacy of tradition and
of universal principles and to formulate the best course of action
they can. What this presupposes, however, is awareness of what the
problems are, understanding of where they come from, and insight
into how they might be overcome -- all of which stem from prior
social experience. My analysis thus does not take men off the hook;
rather, it drives the hook through the masculinist self right into its
patriarchal origins.
There is, however, another matter for which responsibility

must be diffused. This is the responsibility for challenging the
masculinist self and for nurturing its expansion. No old self survives,
nor does a new self emerge, in a social vacuum; only communities
can give and take away selves. It is thus necessary to work together
to root out the many habits of thought and action that unintention-
ally reinforce the masculinist self. New sources of self-esteem and
self-efficacy that do not feed the masculinist self must be created.
This effort, which must be undertaken by women and men together,
is not simply to transform men; it is part of creating a new commu-
nity of fully human selves that are not narrowed by inequalities of
any kind.
The masculinist self grows out of one kind of inequality.

Other systems of oppression and exploitation produce diminished
selves of other kinds. In U.S. society we thus see not only mas-
culinist selves but racist and elitist selves as well. The basic problem,
of course, is the institutionalized devaluing and abuse of one group
of people by another. This creates narrow selves that seek to
maintain the perverse conditions of their own survival. Yet it also
generates tension between and within selves, and this tension,
properly handled, can be the impetus for transformative moral

action.
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Male Supremacy and the Narrowing of the Moral Self

Author(s): Michael Schwalbe

Moral action is never simply a matter of justice reasoning

In this tradition two things are central to understanding

My contention is that male supremacy narrows the moral

command vastly more institutional power. No modern society has

My analysis is not an indictment of biological males. In fact,

The social-constructionist premises of my argument are

Engendering the Self

In G.H. Mead's (1934) social psychology "the self is said to

socially constructed in four ways: the actions of others reinforce

The process of gendering the self begins as soon as infants

My use of the terms male and female is intended to

Selves are gendered in yet another way. This occurs in

encouraged to judge their competence by success in competition

This view does not reduce gender to an attribute of the self.

In this view we are not mechanically driven by "sex role

practices of the communities into which we are born, to which we

I want to clarify a few further matters having to do with the

The point of making these distinctions is to emphasize that

The key implication of all this is that I do not see the

A Pragmatic View of Moral Problem Solving

Pragmatism takes a mundane view of moral problems,

It is not acceptable, however, to force action to proceed.

Moral problems can also arise when individuals experience

Moral problems are thus like problems of any kind. They

environment that resists us is an inanimate one, we think of the

We usually think of perspective taking with reference to

This analysis thus requires a careful consideration of role

When we take the perspective of a resistant inanimate

Most analyses of moral reasoning agree about the impor-

role taking, in the context of moral problem solving, is typically seen

In her book, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and

When we engage in projective role taking we are trying to

Receptive role taking is different. Here we are not trying to

My view, in accord with Noddings, is that protective or

Justice is of course better served by purely cognitive role

The Self and Moral Action

The self as subject comprises impulses to role take. In

overcome. The agentic phase of the self of a responsible moral

The self as object comes into play because we derive a

But we may also give meanings to ourselves that produce

Coordinating any kind of action with others requires that

the groups that have socialized us. The existence of generalized

In Mead's view, the self is thus the psychic mechanism that

The Masculinist Self

In a male supremacist society those born with penises are

Being born male affords a child treatment as a special kind

Constructing a self of any kind also involves learning how

My contention is not that control, competition, and produc-

The particular form of masculinist self-evaluation that has

A further problem arises because the masculinist self tends

The agentic phase of the masculinist self can inhibit

My contention is that these are impulses to engage in projective and

It is not just that male privilege disinclines men to engage

Responsible action is also undermined because of the

The origins of masculinist generalized others are not

It is not my claim that men per se, or even all forms of

4 Justice is always specific to a form of life. It necessarily presupposes a