The Degendering of Virtue

Feminist philosophers Mary Wollstonecraft and Simone de Beauvoir, although separated by centuries and their respective approaches of political liberalism and existentialism, converge to a remarkable degree in their descriptions of women’s situation under oppression and, in particular, in their analysis of the role gendered virtue plays in that oppression. In this paper I identify their common project of “degendering” the virtues as a crucial part of the broader project of theorizing women’s equal humanity. I extrapolate from Wollstonecraft and Beauvoir’s critique to clarify the ways patriarchy sets up gendered virtue as a moral trap for women, one in which “feminine” virtues are virtues for which women are both praised and condemned, affirming their feminine value while denying them the value of a full and equal humanity. I argue that a program of “degendering” the virtues, as embarked upon by Wollstonecraft and Beauvoir, is necessary to the feminist program of gender justice, both to the negative program of rejecting an inherently unfair patriarchal morality and to the positive program of envisioning what women could be once freed from patriarchal influence.