Gendered Language...

So I'm reading a book by Rosalind Hursthouse for my class Confucian Virtue Ethics entitled, "On Virtue Ethics." The book is fairly new (1999), so it doesn't surprise me that Hursthouse doesn't just use masculine language. I was caught off guard, however, finding myself 170 pages into the book and realizing she never uses masculine language at all. Every thought experiment, every example she gives, and every person she refers to in the hypothetical are all "she" and "her." I have a mixed reaction to this.

I hate the fact that the English language is gender specific. If it's not, it's grammatically incorrect most of the time. In that way, I can understand how a female author chooses to always write from the feminine perspective. The problem is that I find myself thinking, "Women and men are different, so I feel somewhat alienated that my particularity of the human race is not present in this book." My thought immediately after that was, "I guess this is how women feel a majority of the time."

Still, I don't think Hursthouse is off the hook. If a man in academia were to write from an entirely masculine perspective, he would be considered politically incorrect and would have to go back and revise his book to include feminine language. Why is it okay for a woman to write entirely from a single-gendered perspective? Does she not fall into the same category as a man simply because her gender has faced oppression for so long?

Part of me really is sympathetic, but there is a large part of me that thinks equal rights should mean equal treatment. If we don't want patriarchy, we shouldn't endorse the sorts of practices that keep this process in motion. On the other side of the coin, we shouldn't enforce the sorts of practices which may engender matriarchy either. Showing gender bias in one way or another, whether it be towards men or women, isn't right. We're different but equal creatures.

A lot of my feminist friends on campus would now rebut me by saying something to this effect, "Men have had the power for so long! It's time the pendulum swung in the other direction and gave women the authority to balance out the injustices that have been done towards women for hundreds of years." This is not feminism. It's simply chauvinism from the feminine perspective. So to say that Hursthouse's gender specific language is warranted to balance out the years of masculine-only writing is ignorant and not truly in favor of equality.

I'm done ranting now. I just wanted to get that off of my chest in a place where I can get responses.

Euthanasia and ethics in practice...

Today I had a really interesting experience. It started with coming home from work and feeling mentally exhausted, so I thought I'd try to get in some light meditation just to calm down. I didn't really want to do it on my back porch like I usually do because it was rather noisy around my neighborhood this time of day, so I got on my bike and went to my favorite secluded pond in the back woods a little bit. That's where things got a little weird.

I walked around the shoreline of this pond (almost big enough to be a lake) just to get some mud between my toes and relax my heart rate a little bit after the bike ride there. In the water I noticed one unusually huge largemouth bass floating on the surface. It looked a little torn up and wasn't moving, so I just assumed it was dead. No big deal. Fish die in lakes all the time. Granted, this was a huge fish (about two feet long, which is a ginormous bass), but a fairly regular occurance. Just when I was about to get into my meditation position, the fish flopped. Weird....

I watched for a few minutes as this bass sporadically flopped in the water, obviously suffering from some massive injury and getting ready to die. It really bothered me. Should I just watch this fish suffer? Should I kill it and put it out of its misery? If I were the fish, what would I want done to me? I pondered for about ten minutes, pacing the shoreline. Eventually, I came to a conclusion. I'm not sure whether it was right or not, but I made a decision.

I waded into the water and grabbed this giant fish. I stared it in the eyes for a little bit and then set it on the dock to die. I couldn't gather the courage to crush it and kill it myself, but I figured I'd speed up the process and end its suffering. The way I saw it, it was an act of compassion to help kill this fish. It was going to die either way. One way it was slow and terrible, the other it was over in a couple of minutes.

After discussion with Lindsey, I realized something that I think is important. While I was pacing and thinking about what to do, I wanted to make sure that I whatever I did (or didn't do, as would be the case had I left the fish to its own misery), I had thought it out. I didn't want to leave the fish alone just because I didn't know what to do. I made a decision on purpose, which I think is part of the intrigue for me. For me, not making a decision at all is just as bad as making the wrong decision, but I could very well be wrong. I'm not enlightened. Thoughts?

I don't know. I just thought I'd share it with you guys and maybe open up some interesting discussion and hear some other points of view on a matter like this. What do you all think? Is it okay to aid in the death of something suffering or am I going to be a largemouth bass for the next fifty lifetimes?