A Rebuttal

It is with some trepidation that I approach, for the first time in many months, what might be considered a “woman’s issue.” Last spring I more or less resigned from my informal position as this blog’s women’s issues editor, finding that such topics tended to provoke a small amount of intelligent discussion and a large amount of frenzied, unreasoned (even, dare I say it, unchivalrous!) vitriol poured down upon me personally. In part this is my own fault; I like to use personal anecdotes to illustrate my points, and so naturally readers conclude that my personal life is the main topic of discussion. In this thread, I will avoid making reference to personal experience, and in exchange I will ask our readers please not to take this as an open invitation to chastise me publicly. If you truly feel it your Christian duty to scold or enlighten me about my personal deficiencies, I invite you to send your thoughts to fraternalcorrection@yahoo.com. I may not answer your email, but I’ll see it. In this public forum, please keep your comments civil, and directed to the discussion at hand. Those who disregard this request will find their posts deleted without comment.

But, with that disclaimer, I really think some intelligent discussion is needed on the subject of women in universities. Bishop Williamson’s missive on this topic has been recognized by most of our contributors and guests as thoroughly silly, and by troubling to write a respectable reply, I may be giving it too much credit. But at least two among us have in all seriousness declared themselves to be much in sympathy with his “sentiments”, and truly, I do think the Bishop’s words pernicious on several levels. They make a mockery of natural law arguments (one can hardly blame contemporary philosophers for refusing to take teleology seriously, if this is their paradigm!), they encourage husbands and fathers to disregard the genuine spiritual needs of their wives and daughters, and they confuse women by teaching them to identify a natural and wholesome desire as disordered and sinful.

Unfortunately, as is always the case with insidious words, Williamson blends truth with falsehood in such a way as to appeal to his intended audience. It is recognized by many that modernity, in its zealousness to win new opportunities for women through any and all means, has distorted our understanding of the feminine to the detriment of both sexes. Some people, in their eagerness to combat this trend, delight in almost any argument that emphasizes woman’s submissive nature and diminishes her opportunities for participation in the public sphere. I suggest that more careful consideration is needed. Egalitarianism may not be the answer, but recognition of that fact is only the beginning of the conversation, and it is still entirely possible to treat women unjustly and deprive them of opportunities and freedoms that they ought to have. Therefore, I will undertake to detail the philosophical errors of this document, after which I will reflect on some of the more practical advantages and disadvantages of sending girls to universities. Because Bishop Williamson is so sloppy in his argumentation (particularly in his tendency to run together arguments that should be treated separately), some reconstruction may be required on my part in order to render his thoughts intelligible, but I will try to capture his views as accurately as possible.

Turning first to the more directly philosophical questions, it seems that the Bishop is attempting a natural law-type argument, using St. Thomas as his primary source of support. The central claim is that, given their natural orientation towards family and motherhood, it is against a woman’s nature to develop intellectually. It would be difficult to exaggerate the degree to which he thinks this pursuit unsuitable for a girl; indeed, it almost seems as if His Excellency thinks it unnatural for women to think discursively at all. So unsuitable is the mind of woman for abstract thought that he presumes to put the point into neat syllogistic form: “true universities are for ideas, ideas are not for true girls, so true universities are not for true girls.” So different is her mind from a man’s that, “no husband can understand how the mind of his wife works!” Even while listening to her teachers, she is not engaging in critical thought, but rather “learning by osmosis.” And if a woman does succeed in developing her powers of discursive reasoning, she then “will not be properly thinking as a woman. The dilemma is inescapable: she cannot do what is properly men’s thinking or work without cutting across her deepest nature.”

How far do the writings of St. Thomas, on which the Bishop depends, support this view? Well, on my best reading, St. Thomas does appear to think women less suited than men for the pursuit of higher learning. And, though the Angelic Doctor is always deserving of respect and deference, I would venture to say that the nature of women is not one of his strongest subjects. In marking women as inappropriate candidates for ecclesial authority, he can offer scriptural support, but insofar as he awards them a more restricted and passive role in society at large, he seems to be relying on two ideas: first, that women have a limited capacity for acquiring knowledge to an advanced degree, and second, that they are passive agents biologically (or, in other words, that it is the man who provides a child with human form, while the woman provides only the ground in which a baby can take shape.) Both of these are merely asserted without argument (see ST 1a, 92,1). The former claim might be defended, but a wealth of empirical evidence renders it implausible. Though not necessarily precisely equal to men in every field, women have shown themselves capable of serious academic achievement. The latter claim, as embryology has shown, is straightforwardly false.

I think there is room, then, for quibbling with the Angelic Doctor. I suspect Bishop Williamson thinks so too, which is why he deviates from St. Thomas’ argument in order to offer a somewhat different, and much sillier, view which Thomas himself would surely have rejected. St. Thomas merely thought that women were, generally speaking, unable to attain high levels of intellectual development. In light of evidence to the contrary, the Bishop agrees that they are able, but contends instead that it is unfitting for them to do so. Girls who attempt to develop their minds in this way are “distorted” and acting contrary to God’s will. If we fit this into the mold of a natural law argument, it would seem to follow that girls who develop (or even use?) their capacities for discursive thought are sinning.

This conclusion is radically at odds with St. Thomas’ view, according to which discursive reasoning is a deep and integral part of the human mind. It is through reasoning from effects to causes that we gain a basic familiarity with the world and learn how to function within it. Animals have instincts, allowing them to function without any understanding of causes; God himself knows all things simultaneously and thus has no need of discursive reasoning. But between these two levels lies rationality, the form of understanding proper to beings who are not God, but are made in His image. And indeed, St. Thomas takes the intellect to be the very thing that distinguishes us as being, unlike the beasts, in the image and likeness of God. It is through our intellectual acts that we most nearly imitate God’s perfections.

So, if abstraction is incompatible with womanhood, what sort of creature is the woman? Not God, presumably, which means she cannot be above discursive thought. If she is below it, this will put her on a level with the beasts, operating on instinct because they lack the sort of intellect that can reason about causes. If this is the right description of a woman, then she is not made in God’s image. And, being a creature utterly different from a man, it is difficult to see how she can ever be saved by Christ’s redemptive act.

To my mind this conclusion is enough in itself to dismiss the Bishop's essay as offensive and absurd, but for the sake of argument, let’s try approaching his Excellency’s position from another angle. What would lead him to suppose that intellectual activity is, for woman, contrary to the natural law? His argument plays on a supposition of complimentarity of the sexes. He contends that men are disposed to worry about their dealings with the outside world, while women occupy themselves with caring for the family. Now, this basic picture does not seem implausible to me, and it finds echoes in many other places. CS Lewis suggests that, within the family, the woman should be the special advocate of the family’s interests, while the man worries about dealing fairly with others. Men by nature feel it their responsibility to protect the family from danger and support them materially, but it is usually the women who sit up all night with a sick child or a dying grandparent. In contemporary ethics, many philosophers have described this same divide; female philosophers, they say, gravitate towards an “ethics of care” while males are more preoccupied with justice.

More development would be required to establish the point securely, but for the sake of argument I will grant Bishop Williamson’s conjecture that the sexes are naturally disposed towards these different areas of concern. How does this relate back to education? To the Bishop, it is apparently obvious that concern can only be expressed through sheer outbursts of irrational emotion. It isn’t obvious to me. Both Aristotle and St. Thomas would agree that any virtuous person should experience emotions, but regulate them appropriately through the intellect. There is no reason to think that masculine virtue and feminine virtue are different in this regard, even if they are sometimes manifested in different ways. And it is evident in any case that intense concern for the needs of others is not incompatible with a strong intellect. If his Excellency thinks it is, I would ask: which of these characteristics did Our Lord lack?

Perhaps the best thing the Bishop could do for himself at this point would be to remark that, even if a trained intellect is not incompatible with a woman’s nature, it is less necessary for her than it is for a man. Emotions are more obviously needed for a nurturer than they are for a magistrate, who is after all supposed to be as dispassionate as possible. We might suppose also that a higher degree of intellectual training is needed for men, who are more likely to pursue various sorts of careers. This is a more promising avenue, and it might really be possible to argue that, given the different natures of men and women, it is more expedient to educate boys than girls. I do think, though, that both sexes are likely to be improved by a good education. A man, if he does not understand justice properly, is inclined towards the unjust domination of others. But a woman is inclined towards concern of the perverted, malicious sort – gossip, meddling in others’ affairs, and wasting time with such frivolities as fashion or women’s television. These defects are likely to be avoided or lessened by a solid education. The educated and refined woman will learn to occupy her mind with more uplifting things, which may well help her to improve in virtue. She will be less likely to be insipid and petty, and, if her schooling is good, will have learned through it the value of work and of discipline. The effects of her intellectual improvement are also likely to be seen in the sort of upbringing and education she gives to her children. As Newman argued so eloquently, a proper education allows the human mind to grasp the truth more perfectly, which cannot but be an advantage for any human creature.

In any case, the most important point is that Bishop Williamson has departed radically from St. Thomas’ position. Thomas appears to think that women are somewhat deficient in their capacity for wisdom, but he never suggests that it is improper for them to develop the intellect so far as they are able. If, as the Bishop himself seems to think, many of them are well able, then it is entirely reasonable for such women to be educated.

It would take too long to answer every one of the Bishop’s points with appropriate detail, but I think some can be dismissed as peripheral. He argues that women are not suitable authority figures. There is some basis for this claim, but in the first place, St. Thomas’ arguments on this point prohibit women only from holding positions of ecclesial authority, and in the second place, the need to produce future leaders is only one of the purposes of education. His Excellency complains that most modern universities are in a state of moral decay, which is a justified concern, but not obviously relevant to the question of whether women specifically should be educated. Also, he speculates that the distraction caused by having girls present in the university will detract from the boys’ education. It seems to me that, in a properly regulated university, men and women should be able to study together without being overwhelmed by the distractions of the opposite sex. It is neither possible nor desirable to separate the sexes entirely at this age, and boys and girls do need forums in which they can meet one another and learn to behave appropriately with members of the opposite sex. However, even if the Bishop is right about the need for separation, the logical conclusion would be that Catholics should found more respectable single-sex schools. There is no reason why the girls shouldn’t have their own universities just as the boys do.

Finally, the Bishop argues that educated women are likely to be prideful. Every worthwhile human achievement carries with it a temptation to pride, and indeed it is probably advisable for highly educated women to seek husbands among the more educated men. But given a properly educated husband, a refined woman is no more likely to fall prey to pride than one who is beautiful, or blessed with a lovely singing voice, or the mother of unusually attractive or talented children. And, for an educated man, an educated wife seems a most fitting companion. If she is not clever enough to understand him and converse with him, the time they spend together is likely to be dull, and he will suffer the hardship of going through life (to quote a novel that the Bishop *has* approved as reading material for girls) unable to respect his partner.

Before I conclude, let us set aside for a moment the crazed ramblings of a ridiculous bishop and consider more practical questions. Education is time-consuming, and it is expensive. Women often delay marriage and family life in order to pursue degrees, and in this country, tremendous resources are devoted to higher education. There will often be a conflict between a woman’s educational plans and her family plans, and in the end all parents must value their children’s welfare above their own. In short, educational plans should not be our highest priority in life.

But surely this is not sufficient reason to ban women from higher education altogether! Tobias Petrus has suggested on another thread that women ought to marry and start having children as soon as they are physically and emotionally able, at around age 20. I give my blessing to any 20-year-olds who wish to follow this course, but I don’t really see why it’s necessary for everyone. Education should not be allowed to take the place of motherhood, which does often happen in our society. But if we could persuade people to stop using contraceptives, I think this problem would be adequately solved. The people who are denigrating women’s education seem also to think that married people ought to be having children in very rapid succession. Well, a 20-year-old who follows all of your advice is likely to end up with perhaps 12 or 15 children. Good for her if she can handle it, but is that really necessary? She could finish college, marry, and have plenty of time left for 10. Even if she gets a graduate degree of some kind, she still might easily manage 6 or 8.

People who argue that women were born primarily to be baby-makers should stop and reflect that advances in medical science have drastically changed the fortunes of women. In eras of history in which few people lived past 50, when women frequently died in childbirth and children in infancy, the propagation of the human race did indeed require that women devote most of their lives to the task of creating and raising new people. These days, most women survive childbirth and most babies successfully reach adulthood. And people quite often live to be 80 or 90 years old. So a woman doesn’t need to bear 10 children, just in hope of seeing 3 or 4 of those have families of their own. And even if she does have 10, she’s unlikely to spend more than about 30 or 35 of her 80-plus years raising the little ones. What is she to do with the rest of her life? Youth will be sweeter and old age easier to bear if she is taught to exercise her mind with serious and uplifting intellectual nourishment.

Formal education is not the most important thing in life. Often women do need to stop and consider whether their educational or professional plans are really selfish, and whether their priorities need to be reordered. Still, the desire to learn is a healthy thing, and when legitimate interests must be given up for the sake of family, this should be acknowledged as a serious sacrifice. Rather than scolding a woman for having fostered unfeminine desires, as Bishop Williamson seems wont to do, caring husbands or parents ought to do what they can to lessen the loss, by encouraging other outlets for learning (book groups, weekly classes, stimulating hobbies), and by supporting women who decide to go back to school or pursue a late career after their children are grown. And actually, they can help a lot just by acknowledging and respecting a sacrifice for what it is. It is hurtful and humiliating to give up something valuable for another’s sake, only to have the beneficiary belittle the loss. Having a husband who understands and appreciates his wife’s sacrifices could make a world of difference to many women out there. That sort of appreciation would go much further towards reestablishing domestic harmony than clownish tracts that, if taken seriously, would call into question whether women can even be properly classified as human beings. And so, for anyone who believes that women are rational creatures made in God’s image, it would be better if absurd figures like Bishop Williamson were either forgotten, or ridiculed to the point where they can no longer do any damage.


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