Feeling Wisely and Too Well: Mistaken Judgments of Emotion

FEELING WISELY AND TOO WELL: MISTAKEN JUDGMENTS OF EMOTION

L.H. Townsend

A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy.

Chapel Hill 2019

Approved by:

Susan Wolf

Douglas MacLean

Carla Merino-Rajme

John Roberts

Sarah Stroud

ABSTRACT L.H. Townsend: Feeling Wisely and Too Well: Mistaken Judgments of Emotion (Under the direction of Susan Wolf)

The history of philosophy has seen many theories that are, in one way or another, unfriendly to the emotions. Emotions are perceived as irrational: they are thought to be separate from reason, to distort rational thinking, or to lead people to act against their own best interest or judgment. Emotions are perceived as undesirable and inferior: emotional people are thought immature, weak, or incompetent. I argue that this legacy of problematic ideas shows up in contemporary literature, even in work that appears to be friendlier toward the emotions. Intense emotions, especially, are likely to be subject to distorted or mistaken evaluations. Moreover, there is an anti-emotion bias in everyday life consistent with the tendency in the literature to distort and undervalue, revealed by patterns of mistaken judgments of emotional response to oppression. I argue that it is important to recognize these phenomena as demonstrating a bias against emotion, and that merely reducing it to other forms of bias overlooks something important. However, I acknowledge the disparate impact anti-emotion bias has on women and people of color. My arguments in this chapter are not meant to challenge or diminish the role racism and sexism have in the impact of anti-emotion bias. Rather, by pointing out bias against emotion and its interaction with other biases, I hope to illuminate one way oppression functions.

If indeed anti-emotion bias interacts with and reinforces oppression, my arguments shed light not only on how to improve our philosophical theories of emotion, but on an important part of the project of dismantling racist and sexist oppression. Finally, I argue that the variety of evaluative standards by which we assess emotion deserves more attention in our theories and iii

everyday judgment. Paying attention to the many ways emotion can be good or bad will result in greater appreciation of the complexity of emotion, and is likely to expand our conception of the range of emotion that is valuable and appropriate.

For my younger self, and everyone who feels “too” well

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Susan: thanks for slogging through what were some really messy drafts (to put it mildly), for helping me turn them into something readable, and for helping me improve so much as a writer. Carla: your comments were incredibly helpful, constructive, and encouraging. That sounds so small, but more than once throughout the years your feedback was exactly what I needed to hear and how I needed to hear it. Thank you. Doug: thanks for being up for arguing with me. Mariska: thank you for looking out for graduate students. It’s meant a lot to me to have you in the department. Brook: I am not sure I would be here if you had not been such an incredible mentor to me early on. I am so grateful for your role in my development as a philosopher and a feminist. And thank you for telling me to stick it out and finish when six months felt like forever and those three letters didn’t feel worth the struggle.

Thank you to the feminist philosophers who wrote brilliant essays that were a joy to read and helped me understand my world and recognize what I was trying to say: Susan Campbell,

Margaret Little, Alison Jaggar: each of you wrote papers that helped me remember why I love philosophy when I really needed the reminder. Audre Lorde (for everything), Alice Walker

(especially for “Olive Oil” and everything else in The Way Forward is With A Broken Heart and

Anything We Love Can Be Saved), Brittney Cooper, Kristie Dotson, and Marilyn Frye.

To my teachers and space-holders: Kevin, thank you for hanging out with me in the abyss of my mind and giving me space to wander around in there. Maggie, thank you for helping me back into my body and emotions. Patty, I will be forever grateful to you for creating the most

vi magical, most healing, most queer space I’ve ever had the privilege to be present in. Being in that space helped my spirit wake up and dare to imagine it was possible to be full and present and vulnerable without turning away from the ugliness and oppression. Michelle, you are a wonder. This world is without a doubt a better place for you being in it and I am better for having known you. Thank you for embodying love and contradiction and skill in action. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and intuition.

To those beside and behind me: Aliosha and Minji: thank you for making the department just a bit brighter for me. Tamara and Caleb: I am beyond grateful for being part of the best cohort ever. I don’t know if I would be here without you and if I were it would have been a much worse time. Macy: thank you for the feminist consults, the perfect facial expressions, and being on the same page. You are a good person and a great friend. DeeAnn, you quickly became one of my favorite people and (from my perspective, even though we haven’t really fought yet) a very good friend. Listening to you laugh is medicinal. You helped me feel a little less alone during some of the worst bits of this process. Stephanie, thanks for the insight and inspiration only a fellow water sign could bring to this project—it seriously got this whole thing going.

To the amazing groups of women who have kept my spirit alive: Becca, Jody, Serena, and Joy: our little group has given me a taste of what the world can be and our weekends have been such magical cocoons of goodness. I have so much love for you all. To my Vagina

Monologues Fam: thank you for such an amazing perfect foray outside the department. Mama V loves you. Steph, Jamie, Dar, Linds, Em, Macy, Tamara, Caleb: group chats are legit so important and I am so grateful for ours.

Linda: I can’t think of the right words to thank you so you get your own line.

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Special shout-out to Steph and Jamie who’ve been around for twenty (!) years and counting. To my parents and sisters: thank you for giving me a rock-solid start in life and just enough dysfunction to keep things interesting. I am always grateful for you. To Momma, who I suspect will teach me more about life and love than just about any other creature on Earth. I am privileged every day by your companionship. To Hanna: I was only kidding a little when I said you taught me everything I know about anger. This project couldn’t have happened if you hadn’t given me the space to find the words for my feelings (even if you did end up exasperated by just how many words I came up with). I love you.

To my students: you gave me life, refreshed my love for philosophy and people, and taught me so much. It has been a privilege to teach and a crucial part of how I was able to make through the Ph.D. There are so many students I am grateful for. Special thanks to: my

Existentialism class in 2015—my first-ever solo course and an absolutely delightful group to spend the summer with. All the students who look alive and nod vigorously—it is hard to overstate how grateful I am for you, and all the students who let themselves get excited about and frustrated with the texts. Allana who paid me the ginormous compliment of taking three courses with me and boosted my ego forever. Marleina (you look like a philosopher to me you are a damn good philosopher), Thom, Summer (thank you for trusting me), Chris (your authenticity and open, friendly nature makes me smile even now), Hailey (you have no idea how much your recognition meant to me), Rachel, Antonio (I still remember your blog post from

Vagina Monologues), and Zakiyyah (you gave me faith in assigning revisions. It was such a pleasure to read your ideas and watch you improve so quickly). Kat, thanks for reminding me we have choices even when it doesn’t feel like it. My Philosophical Issues of Gender students in

2016—thanks for the conversation about mansplaining, whitesplaining, and last names. Raven,

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Sarah, Elissa, Emily, Andrew—y’all were in one of my most challenging but most rewarding classes. Each of you had so much heart and so many brilliant ideas. Sophie—you’re incredible. It was an honor to share space and conversations with you and I love watching what you’re doing in the world. To the students in my African-American Political Philosophy course—I was so worried about taking on a new course while finishing my dissertation but y’all were just what I needed to make it through. This has been one of my favorite-ever courses to teach. I won’t call you out by name since the term isn’t over yet but please know that many of you brought me so much joy with your brilliant ideas and your willingness to laugh and struggle and find the words and demand excellence of yourselves. I have treasured our time together.

TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 ...... 1 Introduction ...... 1 What is an emotion? ...... 3 Emotion in the History of Philosophy...... 4 Plato ...... 6 Aristotle...... 8 The Stoics...... 10 Hume ...... 13 Kant ...... 15 A problematic legacy ...... 18 Contemporary views ...... 24 Peter Goldie and Dual Process Theory ...... 25 Martha Nussbaum ...... 29 Jonathan Haidt ...... 33 The problem of neglected standards ...... 36 D’Arms and Jacobson ...... 37 Amia Srinivasan ...... 39 Conclusion ...... 42 CHAPTER 2: DON’T TELL ME TO CALM DOWN: A DEFENSE OF INTENSE EMOTIONS ...... 44 Introduction ...... 44 Intense Emotion and Excess ...... 45 Two Perspectives ...... 47 A dubious generalization ...... 51 Intensity and Disadvantage ...... 56 The prescriptive conclusion ...... 58 An objection to the prescriptive conclusion ...... 60 Conclusion ...... 67 CHAPTER 3: MISJUDGMENTS OF EMOTIONAL RESPONSES TO OPPRESSION ...... 70

Introduction ...... 70 Mistaken judgments of inaptness ...... 71 An Example ...... 71 Generalizing the analysis ...... 79 Misjudgments of Misplacement ...... 80 Objects of Emotional Response to Systemic Problems ...... 81 The Blame Game: Apt Objects of Emotion ...... 82 Blameless? ...... 84 Anger without blame ...... 88 Misjudgments about intensity ...... 95 Examples ...... 96 Why these responses are not overreactions ...... 97 Distorted perception ...... 99 Bad action ...... 100 Conclusion ...... 101

CHAPTER 4: ANTI-EMOTION BIAS ...... 102

Introduction ...... 102 The Example: What happens at Yale does not stay there ...... 105 Bias and the Barrier Assumption ...... 109 Barrier Assumption, Take Two ...... 115 Analysis of Language...... 118 How “offense” and “discomfort” center the conversation on emotion ...... 119 How should we respond to offense, discomfort, and hurt feelings? ...... 119 Emotion as insignificant...... 122 Emotions as unjustified ...... 127 Offense as subjective ...... 130 Emotion as distorting ...... 133 Conclusion ...... 134 Oppressed Populations and Anti-Emotion Bias ...... 135 Stereotypes and Increased Perception of Emotionality ...... 135 Stereotypes and Increased Perception of Inaptness ...... 138 Differing Norms ...... 140

Emotionality and (White) Femininity ...... 141 CHAPTER 5: THE BEGINNINGS OF A SOLUTION ...... 143 Introduction ...... 143 The variety of evaluative standards ...... 144 Justifying the three proposals ...... 146 How the proposals improve evaluations of emotion ...... 149 A more complete picture: Haidt and the conflict between standards ...... 149 Increased nuance: Nussbaum and objects of emotion ...... 151 New Possibilities ...... 155 Emotional responses to oppression ...... 156 Why emotional responses to oppression are prone to misjudgment ...... 156 How the three proposals are part of an anti-oppression project ...... 158 APPENDIX ...... 161 Timeline Summary ...... 161 Email from The Intercultural Affairs Committee to the Yale Student Body ...... 161 Email from Associate Master Erika Christakis to Silliman College Students ...... 163 Open Letter to Associate Master Erika Christakis from Yale students, staff, faculty, and alumni (authored by student Ryan Wilson) ...... 165 Partial Transcript from TheAsianRepublican Video of Nicholas Christakis Confrontation with Students ...... 167 Partial Transcript from TheFIREorg Video of Nicholas Christakis Confrontation with Students ...... 173 WORKS CITED ...... 174

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CHAPTER 1 Introduction

The history of philosophy has seen many theories that are, for one reason or another, unfriendly to the emotions.1 For example, the Stoics advocated for the complete extirpation of emotion. Kant supposed we would be better off without many types of emotion, and other theories neglect to mention emotion or affect where it seems rather important to address them.

There are some familiar stereotypes that show up even in what are arguably friendlier or more nuanced views. Emotions are irrational: they are separate from reason, distort rational thinking, or lead people to acting against their own best interest or judgment. Emotions are undesirable and inferior: emotional people are immature, weak, or incompetent. They are associated with children, women, and femininity.

There is a spectrum of attitudes held toward emotion in light of these stereotypes. At the far end are the Stoics, who claim we would be better off without the emotions and that we should try to rid ourselves of them. Others reject the project of complete extirpation, either because they perceive emotion to be an inevitable feature of human life or because they acknowledge that emotion has some value, but still emphasize the need for containment. For example, emotion is

1 I take a closer look at some of these views in later in this chapter. Here, I provide just a rough sketch to set up and motivate the project.

sometimes perceived to be appropriate only when restricted to certain spheres (to private life, for example), valuable only in specific, limited roles (such as indicating to an individual her own subconscious beliefs or insecurities), and it is thought crucial for emotion to be held in check by reason.

There is, perhaps, relatively more acceptance for the emotions in contemporary theory: on some views, their centrality in human life is enthusiastically (not just regrettably) acknowledged and their value emphasized. Still, the legacy of these unfriendly views and stereotypes remain. There is a tendency to undervalue emotion and to compress the range of emotion that counts as appropriate. This happens in multiple ways: arguments that the value of emotion is restricted to limited spheres and roles, recommendations to stay vigilant lest emotions distort one’s perception or push one toward immoral action, and assumptions that emotion tends to be an impediment to important aims and functions. It is still possible to be diminished and undermined by association with emotion. The result is that certain kinds of emotional value are overlooked and our judgments of emotion are distorted, effects that have a particularly negative impact on certain oppressed groups.

In this chapter, I review some of the problematic historical ideas about emotion in philosophy. Then, I identify the legacy of these ideas in contemporary literature. Finally, I present some work that diagnoses a particular problem in assessments of emotion, which I take to be involved in broader ways emotion is undervalued and our evaluations of them distorted.

The problem is neglect of the variety of standards by which it is appropriate to assess emotion.

Building on this literature, in Chapter 2, I argue that evaluations of intense emotions are often distorted or mistaken. In Chapter 3, I argue that there is an anti-emotion bias in everyday life consistent with this tendency in the literature to distort and undervalue, revealed by patterns

2 of mistaken judgments of emotional response to oppression. In Chapter 4, I argue that it is important to recognize these phenomena as demonstrating a bias against emotion, and that merely reducing it to other forms of bias overlooks something important. However, I acknowledge the disparate impact anti-emotion bias has on women and people of color. My arguments in this chapter are not meant to challenge or diminish the role racism and sexism have in the impact of anti-emotion bias. Rather, by pointing out bias against emotion and its interaction with other biases, I hope to illuminate one way oppression functions. If indeed anti- emotion bias interacts with and reinforces oppression, my arguments in Chapter 5 shed light not only on how to improve our philosophical theories of emotion, but on an important part of the project of dismantling racist and sexist oppression. In Chapter 5, I argue that the variety of evaluative standards by which we assess emotion deserves more attention in our theories and everyday judgment. Paying attention to the many ways emotion can be good or bad, beneficial or harmful, advantageous or disadvantageous, will result in greater appreciation of the complexity of emotion, and is likely to expand our conception of the range of emotion that is valuable and appropriate.

What is an emotion? First and foremost, I mean by emotion the kinds of things most people in our culture are referring to when they use the term: anger, jealousy, sadness, happiness, gratitude, shame, guilt, fear, and love. Emotions typically involve a feeling component: a phenomenal property of how it feels to experience a given emotion. This aspect is sometimes observable or measurable, as when we hear a shakiness to someone’s voice or measure an increase in blood pressure. A feeling can be more or less pronounced: one may not always notice or properly identify what one is feeling.

Emotions also involve a component that is sometimes called intentional, cognitive, evaluative, or

3 rational. Emotions are about something. Anger seems to involve a judgment that there has been an insult, injury, or injustice. Gratitude responds to the evaluation that one is the beneficiary of good fortune or good will. Sadness “presents” some state of affairs not just as a change, but a loss. This feature of emotion can be evaluated in terms of fit: for example, anger is fitting if there has been insult, injury, or injustice. If the emotion “fits” the situation we might call it apt, fitting, or appropriate. The intensity of an emotion can also be evaluated in terms of fit: intense sadness is fitting when a friend dies, a milder sadness when one’s favorite television show is cancelled.

A theory of emotion consistent with these two features, the phenomenal and the intentional, could be worked out in various ways. For example, some theories characterize the second component as involving judgment, others appraisal, perception, or evaluation. I don’t want to commit to any particular view. What is important to me is that emotions are something both rationally assessible and phenomenal. This is distinct from a conception of emotions as

“‘nonreasoning movements,’ unthinking energies that simply push the person around, without being hooked up to the ways in which she perceives or thinks about the world.”2 It is also distinct from any conception under which one could provide a complete description of an emotion in terms of a belief or judgment or physiological fact.

Emotion in the History of Philosophy

Rationality occupies a central and esteemed position within philosophy. It is humanity’s defining feature: we are rational animals. It lends us dignity and importance. It justifies our

2 Although it is not her view, this description is articulated by Martha Nussbaum in: Nussbaum (2001). Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Cambridge University Pres: New York. 24-25

4 demand for certain kinds of treatment. It may be thought to warrant our use of natural resources and nonhuman animals. Rationality is the ruler of a wise and well-ordered soul.

Emotion has a somewhat more complicated relationship to philosophy. It is sometimes perceived as separate from and in opposition to rationality. Rationality is the best of humanity: something we share with the gods; that elevates us above nonhuman animals; and gives us the capacity for autonomy and morality. Emotion is our shadow side; often thought to constitute or cause irrationality, immorality, and imprudence. We are our best selves when we rise above certain emotions, or emotion in general. Sometimes, philosophers simply neglect to mention emotion at all. Yet, others seem to champion the emotions. According to Pascal, “the heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.”3 Hume appears to elevate the passions famously pronouncing that: “reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”4

In the following sections, I consider some of these influential ideas. It is not a full history of the philosophy of emotion, nor do I claim that the interpretations I provide are the only (or even the best) way to understand these views. Rather, I articulate interpretations of several prominent views which have been influential and which also devalue the emotions, going on to identify the remaining legacy of these problematic ideas in contemporary theory. However, I don’t mean to imply that these are the only things philosophers have had to say about emotion.

3 Pascal, Pensees, Section IV: 277

4 Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book II, Part III, Section III “Of the influencing motives of the will”

Plato How to best interpret Plato’s treatment of emotion is controversial. Some of this controversy stems from disagreement about how to interpret Plato’s tripartite theory of the soul.

On this theory, the soul is made up of reason, spirit, and appetite. Though each has an important function, reason is in charge and more sophisticated than the other somewhat more primitive parts. Thus, on interpretations that identify emotion with the spirited or appetitive part of the soul, emotions seem to occupy an inferior or diminished status.5,6 Julia Annas claims Plato is vague about the “lower part of the soul” because he perceives it “as simply the trashy part, the part, whatever it is like, that opposes reason, the hero of the soul.”7 Others claim that emotion does not fit neatly into any one part of the soul because Plato recognized the nuance and variety of emotional phenomena as well as its centrality to cognition.8 Some scholars emphasize Plato’s focus on controlling emotion and his doubt about their role in moral life.9 Others insist that emotion has an important role to play in Plato’s conception of human life, albeit one that is separate from and subordinate to reason.10

Whether emotion ought to be associated with any particular part of the soul is disputed.

Nevertheless, there is a fairly straightforward and influential reading of Plato’s theory of the

5 Knuuttila S. (2014) Emotions from Plato to the Renaissance. In: Knuuttila S., Sihvola J. (eds) Sourcebook for the History of the Philosophy of Mind. Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind, vol 12. Springer, Dordrecht, 463

6 Moss, J. (2008). Appearances and Calculations: Plato’s Division of the Soul. In: Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy XXXIV, edited by David Sedley, Oxford University Press, ProQuest Ebook Central, 35

7 Annas, J. (1981). An Introduction to Plato’s Republic. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 339

8 Price, A. (2009). Emotions in Plato and Aristotle. InThe Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Emotion, Edited by Peter Goldie, Oxford University Press

9 Knuuttila, op. cit., and Hsu, H. (2007) The Harmony of the Soul. 臺大文史哲學報, 無: 67, 139-159

10 Blackson, T. (2018). Three Platonic Theories. Accessed January 22, 2019 at http://tomblackson.com/Ancient/chapter53.html

6 tripartite soul that paints emotion in a rather negative light. Plato presents the parts of the soul as separate and hierarchal. This lends itself to the notion that emotion and reason are in opposition, and that emotion is inferior. In The Republic, he first distinguishes the rational from the irrational

(or appetitive) parts of the soul:

“…the one with which man reasons, we may call the rational principle of the soul, the other, with which he loves and hungers and thirsts and feels the flutterings of any other desire, may be termed the irrational or appetitive…”11 Then, he establishes a third part of the soul: “…passion, which has already been shown to be different from desire, turns out also to be different from reason.

But that is easily proved: --We may observe even in young children that they are full of spirit almost as soon as they are born, whereas some of them never seem to attain to the use of reason, and most of them late enough.

Excellent, I said, and you may see passion equally in brute animals, which is a further proof of the truth of what you are saying. And we may once more appeal to the words of Homer…for in this verse Homer as clearly supposed that the power which reasons about the better and worse to be different from the unreasoning anger which is rebuked by it.”12 We can begin to grasp from these passages how, on interpretations that suppose emotion is located in either the spirited or appetitive parts of the soul (or spread across both), Plato does not appear to hold them in high esteem. They are either irrational or unreasonable. They are

“rebuked’ by reason. Even young children and brute animals may be spirited. Plato makes explicit the supremacy of reason in The Laws:

“…these affections in us are like cords and strings, which pull us different and opposite ways, and to opposite actions; and herein lies the difference between virtue and vice. According to the argument there is one among these cords which every man ought to

11 The Republic, Book IV, 439d, translated by Jowett, B. Accessed: http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.5.iv.html

12 Ibid, 441a-c

grasp and never let go, but to pull with it against all the rest; and this is the sacred and golden cord of reason …” (Laws, Book I)13 In The Republic, he acknowledges that the other parts of the soul can be helpful, but only if reason rules: "Isn’t it proper for the calculating part to rule, since it is wise and has forethought about all of the soul, and for the spirited part to be obedient to it and its ally? Certainly."14 There are the rational and irrational parts of the soul. The rational part of the soul is the one that ought to rule: wisdom, morality, and well-being depend upon it. Though emotion may enjoy a helping role when it is well-regulated, it is at least sometimes contrary to reason; causing distorted perception, imprudent or immoral action, and unpleasant disharmony. Whether or not

Plato meant for the rational/irrational distinction to be synonymous with reason and emotion, some later scholars will read it this way. The understanding of emotion and reason as a dichotomy forms the foundation for many of the biased attitudes toward emotion that are still pervasive today.

Aristotle Aristotle’s Doctrine of the Mean identifies virtue with the mean between two extremes.

Excess is on extreme and deficiency the other, virtue is the intermediate between them.15 Part of virtue involves being disposed to feel the right way, where what is right will be an intermediate intensity between feeling too much and feeling too little. Aristotle offers the example of anger, claiming that: “with reference to anger we stand badly if we feel it violently or too weakly, and well if we feel it moderately; and similarly with reference to the other passions.”16 I think it is

13 The Laws, Book I, translated by Jowett, B. Accessed: http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/laws.1.i.html

14 The Republic, Book IV, 441e. translated by Bloom, A.

15 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, II.6

16 Ibid., II.5

8 reasonably clear that Aristotle was not advocating moderation. Despite use of the term

“moderate” in this interpretation, elsewhere Aristotle makes explicit that the Doctrine of the

Mean ought to be understood as the mean “relative to us” and not an arithmetic mean. An arithmetic mean is the midpoint between two extremes, while the mean relative to us is “neither too much nor too little” and varies by person and circumstance.17 Nevertheless, there is a crude way of interpreting his insights that lends itself to a bias against intense emotion. For example,

Bernard Williams claims that Aristotle is inconsistent in his use of the concept, but that one version amounts to “a substantively depressing doctrine in favor of moderation.”18 W.D. Ross’s translation of the Nicomachean Ethics uses the term “moderately,” and Kant also seems to read the Doctrine of the Mean as being about moderation.19 Popular interpretations, too, sometimes attribute an argument for moderation to Aristotle.20

Identifying virtue with moderation greatly limits the range of emotional intensity perceived to be fitting. The only emotions that will count as apt on this view are of moderate intensity.

“Extreme” emotions are never appropriate. In Chapter 2, I discuss problems in evaluations of intense emotion in greater depth, but for now simply note that a view that universally recommends moderation excludes any emotional response that is particularly intense.

17 Ibid

18 Williams, B. (1985). Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Harvard University Press, 36

19 These readings of Kant’s and Ross’ interpretations of Aristotle are considered in Gottlieb, P. (2009). The Virtue of Aristotle's Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 19-20

20 Journalism at Bucks (n.d.), Ethical decision making for journalists, Accessed March 25, 2019 at: http://faculty.bucks.edu/rogerst/jour275morals.htm; Diaz, A. (2016). Aristotle’s Golden Mean and the Role of Moderation. Bahai Teachings. Accessed March 25, 2019 at: https://bahaiteachings.org/aristotles-golden-mean-role- of-moderation

A critique of the Doctrine of the Mean, articulated by Rosalind Hursthouse, might distort evaluations of emotion in a different way. Hursthouse argues that because a “mean” necessarily occupies a middle place between excess and deficiency, excess and deficiency are the only two kinds of vice on this view. But feelings can go wrong in all kinds of ways beyond being excessive or deficient. For example, an emotion can be about the wrong object, such as when a person gets angry at the receptionist who informs them that the person they were to meet with is out of the office, rather than at the person who has missed the meeting without notice. In this kind of case,

Hursthouse says:

“The objects are not 'too many' or 'too few', but just plain wrong; the vices are not excesses or deficiencies but just ways of going wrong. The fact that many vices can be characterised in terms of 'too . . .', is a fact that has its own interest, but it does not serve to support the doctrine of the mean.”21 Lumping together the many different features of emotion that are subject to evaluation neglects how nuanced emotional responses can be. If there are only two ways that an emotion can

“go wrong” on this theory, that demonstrates an overly-simplistic conception of emotion. I will say more about the problems with failing to account for the variety of evaluative features of emotion later in this chapter and in Chapter 5.

The Stoics Stoic philosophers advance some of the most explicit and extreme positions on emotion, advocating the eradication of virtually all emotion. The Stoics depict emotion as irrational, uncontrollable, excessive, unpleasant, and likely to result in all kinds of imprudent or immoral action. “Passion itself is, according to Zeno, the irrational and unnatural movement of a soul; or,

21 Hursthouse, R. (1980). A False Doctrine of the Mean. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 81. 71

10 an excessive impulse.”22 Emotions derive from four primary passions: desire, fear, pleasure, and pain.23 Each emotion is a judgment, but they are always wrong judgments because they are mistaken about what is valuable. Desire is the judgment that something good is approaching, that one would do well by attaining it and that it is worth striving for. Anger, bitterness, and sexual love are varieties of desire. (Anger is the desire for revenge based on perceived wrongdoing, sexual love the desire for another person based on physical beauty). Fear is the judgment that something bad is approaching and that it is worth avoiding. Fear includes emotions such as agony, shame, fright, and dread. Pleasure—which includes varieties such as schadenfreude and contentment—is the judgment that something good is present. Pain is the belief that something bad is present and includes envy, resentment, pity, grief, and sorrow.24 These emotions are false judgments because they contain the notion that some external event or object is of value or disvalue when in actuality, virtue—the sole human good—is unaffected by external events.

These judgments—for example that getting revenge would somehow be good for the agent

(anger), or that one would be better off avoiding something painful (fear)—are simply false.

Being wronged has no impact on one’s virtue, nor does experiencing injury. The Stoics thought humans ought to avoid and resist these false ideas. Thus, the emotions are considered irrational not in the sense that they are separate from and in opposition to reasoning but because they are always poor reasoning.

22 Inwood, B., & Gerson, L. P. (1997). Hellenistic philosophy: Introductory readings, 197

23 For my purposes, there is not an important distinction between passion and emotion in these texts. For explanation see Nussbaum, Martha (1987). The Stoics on the Extirpation of the Passions. Apeiron. 20, 2; pg. 130, second footnote

24 Inwood, B., & Gerson, L. P. op. cit., 218

In addition to constituting rational mistakes, emotions are also subject to Stoic criticism for moral and prudential reasons. What is done from emotion may be considered immoral if only because it is ‘contrary to right reason:’

“They say that a [morally] perfect action is an appropriate action which covers all of the features, or as we said before, a complete [perfect] appropriate action. What is done contrary to right reason is a [moral] mistake; or, an [action] in which something appropriate has been omitted by a rational animal [is a moral mistake].”25 Moral concern over the emotions takes a more familiar perspective as well. Seneca, warning against anger, claims:

“Anger, as I said, is greedy for punishment…“A good man,” [Plato] says, “does no damage.” Punishment does do damage: therefore punishment does not go with being a good man. Nor, for that reason, does anger, since punishment does go with anger.”26 Seneca also considers whether anger might be strategically useful, perhaps for the energy, motivation, and courage it seems to impart. But he rejects this possibility, advising:

“It is best to beat back at once the first irritations, to resist the very germs of anger and take care not to succumb…It is not the case that the mind stands apart, spying out its affections from without, to prevent their going too far—the mind itself turns into affection. It cannot, accordingly, reinstate that useful and wholesome force which it has betrayed and weakened.”27 It is not just anger, but all emotion that is thought to overpower and lead people to act against their better judgment:

“For every passion is violent, since those who are in a state of passion often see that it is advantageous not to do this, but are swept away by the vehemence [of the passion], as though by some disobedient horse, and are drawn to doing it…”28

25 Ibid., 219

26 Seneca, De Ira, In Solomon, R. (Ed.) What is an Emotion? Page 15

27 Ibid., 16

28 Inwood and Gerson, op. cit., 217

The Stoics also emphasize how unpleasant it is to be emotional, depicting experiences of emotion (even those considered “positive” emotions) as painful, debilitating upheavals. The emotional person is carried away, at the mercy of some external force, as if their very agency is threatened.29 The Stoics believe that even those with a different conception of the good have reason to root out emotion. Given their unpleasantness, unreliability, lack of strategic value, resistance to control, and tendency to make people act against their better judgment, there is simply nothing to redeem them, even if they turn out not to be false judgments.30

Hume It may come as a surprise to find Hume included in a list of philosophers accused of having problematic ideas about emotion. After all, this is the philosopher who claimed that

“reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”31 In the section of the Treatise in which this quote is found,

Hume identifies the notion, common in philosophy and the wider world, that reason and emotion are by nature opposed, and that emotion ought to be subdued, or at least controlled by reason. He resists these ideas, and sets about showing their fallaciousness by arguing first that reason alone can never motivate action and second that it does not make sense, conceptually, to claim that reason and emotion are opposed.

Despite his apparent esteem for emotion, Hume’s characterization of them nevertheless perpetuates some familiar, damaging tropes. Though he insists that reason and emotion are not opposed, he cements the idea that they are entirely separate processes. He claims that emotion is

29 Nussbaum, op. cit., 165-166

30 Ibid., 164

31 Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book II, Part III, Section III “Of the influencing motives of the will”

13 the ruling force, but in doing so reinforces the idea that it is mysterious and largely outside our control. Consider his argument that the passions are not unreasonable or in any way opposed to reason:

“'Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger…'Tis as little contrary to reason to prefer even my own acknowledg'd lesser good to my greater, and have a more ardent affection for the former than the latter…In short, a passion must be accompany'd with some false judgment, in order to its being unreasonable; and even then 'tis not the passion, properly speaking, which is unreasonable, but the judgment. The consequences are evident. Since a passion can never, in any sense, be call'd unreasonable, but when founded on a false supposition, or when it chuses means insufficient for the design'd end, 'tis impossible, that reason and passion can ever oppose each other, or dispute for the government of the will and actions. The moment we perceive the fals-hood of any supposition, or the insufficiency of any means our passions yield to our reason without any opposition.”32 Though Hume would never call an emotion irrational or unreasonable, it is clear from this passage that he is not attributing intelligence to the emotions by resisting those particular characterizations. Our passions may not be “contrary to reason” but they can still be ridiculous: it makes very little sense to prefer the destruction of the world to the scratching of one’s finger. In denying the accusation that this is unreasonable Hume is not claiming that there is something to be said for this preference; he is claiming that the passions are not the kind of thing that can be subject to reason. They are not reasonable or unreasonable; they just are. The radical acceptance of the passions and recognition of their alleged rule over reason comes less from esteem for the passions than a conception of them as incapable of responding to reason. This kind of view comes at a price: we cannot say to the person who would choose the destruction of the world to prevent a scratch on their finger that they ought to feel otherwise, for example. By shielding passion from criticisms of inferiority and irrationality Hume also shields them from positive

32 Ibid.

14 evaluation. Passion is never blamed for irrationality (false beliefs and judgments are at fault for it) but it never gets credit for the wealth of information it can provide. Emotion becomes disconnected from the important ways it engages with the world, or in Hume’s words, emotion doesn’t “reference” the world: “A passion is an original existence, or, if you will, modification of existence, and contains not any representative quality, which renders it a copy of any other existence or modification. When I am angry, I am actually possest with the passion, and in that emotion have no more a reference to any other object than when I am thirsty, or sick…” This seems to obscure the fact that that there may be a reason for feeling a certain way; emotions are about something.

Of course, we ought to acknowledge that the passions are not synonymous with emotion.

The world-destroying pinky example is really more about a preference or desire than emotion, as

I’m using the concept. But though they may not be synonyms, what he says about the passions applies to at least some emotions, or some features of emotion. Further, the way he divides up reason and passion is part of the problem: it precludes (what I judge to be) a better concept of emotion. Although he introduces certain concepts that might be thought to help (such as “calm passions” or the general point of view), these only succeed in showing, I think, that the firm reason/emotion divide is untenable. Finally, there is a popular contemporary view of emotion that I think is an analogue to Hume’s view, which I say more about in the next section.

Kant Some scholars suggest that Kant does not have a single position on the various phenomena we might call “the emotions.”33 His arguments about the value and disvalue of

33 Borges, M. (2004). What Can Kant Teach Us about Emotions? In The Journal of Philosophy. 101:3, 143

15 passion, emotion, inclination, and affect vary.34 Nevertheless, what I am calling emotion is consistently regarded as having low value or disvalue in Kant’s philosophy. There is no doubt about his stance on the passions, for example, which include hate and perhaps envy. He claims that passions are “without exception bad.”35 Emotions (such as joy, sadness, and anger) do not fare much better, characterized as “unfortunate moods teeming with many evils.”36 “To be subject to emotions and passions,” Kant says, “is probably always an illness of mind because both emotion and passion exclude the sovereignty of reason.”37

These “many evils” include familiar stereotypes: emotion distorts perception ( it “makes one more or less blind”) and is counterproductive (“It makes itself incapable of pursuing its own purpose”).38 Like the Stoics, Kant depicts emotion as uncontrollable and a threat to agency, since it “produces a momentary loss of freedom and selfcontrol.”39 He perceives the nature of emotion as resistant to reason, claiming: “to have emotion so much under control that one can cold•bloodedly deliberate whether or not one ought to be angry appears to be something

34 Kant’s distinguished the passions as calmer, more deeply rooted, and much more dangerous than emotions. He conceives of emotions as distinct episodes which come and go more quickly, and are sometimes useful or well- intended. He subjects both to similar criticisms, but I focus on what he says about emotion.

35 Kant. Anthropology. op. cit., 157

36 Ibid.

37 Kant, Immanuel. Anthropology From a Pragmatic Point of View. Carbondale, Ill: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996. https://auth-lib-unc- edu.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/ezproxypass:[_]auth.php?url=http://search.ebscohost.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/login.aspx? direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=22463&site=ehost-live. Pg. 155

38 Ibid., 158

39 Ibid., 174

16 paradoxical.”40 Some emotions, such as anger and shame, “are also incapacitating because of their intensity…”41

Like the Stoics, Kant has a particular conception of moral value that seems to be compatible with complete dispassion (or apathy): the only absolutely good thing is a good will.

Actions only have moral value when a person acts from duty.42 Scholars disagree about whether

Kant’s philosophy accords moral worth to actions motivated both by respect for duty and other emotions,43 and (unlike the Stoics) he leaves open the possibility that some emotions may have limited instrumental value. Still, Kant makes clear that emotions are by no means essential and explicitly aligns himself with the Stoics on the subject:

“The principle of apathy, that is, that the prudent man must at no time be in a state of emotion, not even in that of sympathy with the woes of his best friend, is an entirely correct and sublime moral precept of the Stoic school because emotion makes one (more or less) blind. Nevertheless, the wisdom of Nature has planted in us a disposition for apathy in order to hold the reins provisionally, before reason attains the necessary control. For the purpose of enlivening us Nature has done so by adding to the moral motives for the Good those motives of pathological (sensuous) inducement as a temporary surrogate of reason. Moreover, emotion taken by itself alone is always imprudent; it makes itself incapable of pursuing its own purpose, and it is therefore unwise to allow it to arise intentionally. However, in projecting the morally good, reason can produce the enlivening of our will (in sermons, political speeches to the people, and speeches just to oneself) by combining its ideas with illustrations (examples) which have been attributed to the ideas; consequently it is enlivening, not as effect, but as the cause of an emotion with respect to the good, wherein reason still holds the reins, creating an enthusiasm of good intentions which, however, must be attributed to the faculty of desire and not to the emotion as a stronger sensuous feeling.

40 Ibid., 157

41 Ibid., 165

42 Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. Wood, Allen W. (ed.) (2002). Yale University Press. 9

43 Sherman, N. (1990) The Place of Emotions in Kantian Morality. In Persons, Character, and Morality. Flanagan, O. and Rorty, A. (ed.) MIT Press. 149

Nature's gift of apathy, in the case of sufficient spiritual strength, is, as has been said already, happy self•possession (in the moral sense). He who is gifted with it, is not yet a wise man, but he enjoys the favor of Nature to become wise more easily than others.”44 Kant seems to recognize that emotion is not unequivocally regrettable: it is sometimes associated with the “enlivening” of the will. But this is a very limited concession. Emotion makes one

“(more or less) blind,” and it would be “entirely correct and sublime” to be without it. One ought not to cultivate it or allow it to arise intentionally. Though it can sometimes be a “temporary surrogate of reason,” it is not clear how much use this is, since by itself emotion is “always imprudent.” Reason still must “hold the reins.” Those who are apathetic enjoy self-possession and have an easier time attaining wisdom.

He is clear that emotion itself is not of value. Of compassion, he says: “The Stoic showed a noble cast of mind…when he could not save his friend, [he] said to himself: what is it to me?

In other words, he repudiated imparted suffering.”45 In the Lecture on Ethics, he makes a similar comment: “If in such a case there is no way I can be of help to the sufferer and I can do nothing to alter his situation, I might as well turn coldly away and say with the Stoics: ‘it is not concern of mine; my wishes cannot help him’”46 When emotion has no instrumental value, Kant seems to have no use for it at all.

A problematic legacy I want to point out two problematic ideas in this brief history. First, there is the emotion/reason dichotomy. Sometimes emotion and reason are perceived as oppositional: emotion undermines good reason. Sometimes their oppositional nature is rejected, but they are

44 Kant, Anthropology, op. cit., 156

45 Kant, I. Doctrine of Virtue, as quoted in Sherman, op. cit., 163

46 Kant, I. Lecture on Ethics, as quoted in Sherman, op. cit., 163

18 nevertheless perceived as totally separate processes. Second, emotion is characterized as an impediment of various kinds: it distorts perception, it undermines well-being, it is counterproductive to achieving practical aims, it gets in the way of moral action or a virtuous character.

It is surprising, I think, how these ideas interact in ways that enable low valuations of emotion that cut across substantive theoretical differences. For example, one might think the dichotomy is the root problem. Given the importance of and esteem for rationality, it makes sense to perceive emotion as low-value or disvaluable if it is the opposite of reason. But the

Stoics thought the emotions were a rational process and thus rationally assessible. That is, they were not the “opposite” of reason: they were judgments that could be evaluated as true or false.

Rather than breaking down the emotion/reason dichotomy or elevating the status of emotion, the dichotomy simply becomes emotional reasoning/good reasoning. Though emotions are not perceived as separate from reason, they are perceived as separate from good reason. They are impediments to good judgment, well-being, and practical aims. We will find versions of this idea in contemporary views: even when emotion is conceived as rationally assessable or an important part of rational function there is a tendency to characterize it as crude and prone to distortion or other types of disadvantage.

Perhaps it seems, then, that the real problem is the assumption that emotions are an impediment to reason. Hume seems to champion the emotions, to reject entirely the idea that emotions could undermine reason and to cast them in a role central to moral life. But he does so by cutting off emotions from reason, protecting them from charges of irrationality by placing them entirely beyond the scope of rational assessment. The conception of emotion here is one I have claimed is inaccurate and distorted: one on which they are “nonreasoning movements,”

“unthinking energies that simply push the person around.” Of course, there is much more to

Hume’s theory than I am able to present here. The following discussion is not meant to directly critique Hume. Rather, I want to show first of all the danger of emphasizing a distinction between reason and emotion, and second—to provide an illustration of how a theory need not be hostile to the emotions to distort or minimize their value. However, I do think that the greater one judges the dissimilarity of Hume’s theory with the view I articulate below, the less tenable his distinction between reason and passion is likely to be.

A popular contemporary view of emotion resembles Hume’s in certain ways: for example, in the apparently enthusiastic and nondiscriminating acceptance of emotion, and in placing emotion beyond the scope of rational assessment. This view can be summed up in the slogan, familiar in popular psychology and some therapeutic settings: “all emotions are valid.”

This claim encourages people to accept any and every emotion they may experience. Consider one writer’s assertion: “There are no good or bad emotions, and there is no better or worse way to feel them. It’s important to allow yourself to feel every emotion,”47 or this advice: “No matter what someone else thinks about our circumstances and how we should respond, our feelings are not imagined...Know that your feelings are real and valid…we are going to have times when we feel wounded, sometimes over events that would challenge anyone’s sense of composure, and sometimes over things that may seem insignificant to everyone but us…Maybe the key is to simply feel it, without stressing about whether that’s right or wrong”48 or this blogger insisting that: “our feelings are valid because we feel them,” and after recounting an emotional response

47 (2017) When Emotions Overwhelm You, Just Breathe. Exploring Your Mind. Accessed January 8, 2019 at: https://exploringyourmind.com/when-emotions-overwhelm-you-just-breathe/ 48 Deschene, L. Tiny Wisdom: Your Feelings Are Real and Valid. Tiny Buddha. Accessed March 1, 2019 at: https://tinybuddha.com/quotes/tiny-wisdom-your-feelings-are-real-and-valid/

20 one might judge to be inapt: “it is how I feel, and no one can tell me that that feeling is wrong.

Feelings are not wrong. They are real, and valid, at the time that our hearts present them.”49

These views are certainly very accepting of the emotions, and explicitly assert that they are important. However, they are unable to explain that importance or to accommodate the vast intelligence of the emotions which requires recognition of their rational or cognitive component.

There are several claims being made here, perhaps not especially precise or consistent, but nevertheless worth examining. First, the claim that feelings are not right or wrong might be a claim that feelings are not truth-apt. This is Hume’s claim: passions are not “unreasonable,” they don’t “represent” anything. Suppositions can be false, but not passions. This is plausible enough, but it seems clear that the “all emotions are valid” view also means something more. My interpretation of this view is that emotions are meant to be not just beyond assessments of truth and falsehood but beyond any kind of normative assessment at all. The author who claims “there are no good or bad emotions” takes moral assessment off the table. This is followed by rejecting the propriety of any normative assessment whatsoever with the claim that there are no better or worse ways to feel. She goes on to make an assertion in tension with this one: that it is important to feel every emotion. The incoherence of the claim that emotions are important to feel with the claim that they are not appropriate objects of normative assessment is precisely my worry about cutting off emotion from reason. Why, exactly, would it be important to feel every emotion if there are no good or bad emotions, no better or worse ways to feel?

Next, insistence that feelings are real (rather than “wrong” or imagined) and that it does not matter what anyone else thinks of them or whether they seem insignificant appears to be an

49 Burke, A. (2015). Our Feelings are Valid Because We Feel Them. Psuchology Today. Accessed March 1, 2019 at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/paper-souls/201509/our-feelings-are-valid-because-we-feel-them

21 attempt to shield emotion from being evaluated by standards of fit, in particular. Of course feelings can exist even if they are not understood by others or warranted by the circumstances. I think the aim here is to emphasize the importance of emotion and to shield it from legitimately misguided kinds of criticisms. Here, we see how that aim is undermined by the unwillingness to apply any consistent substantive normative standards.

The biggest problem with a view like this is that, despite insisting that emotions are important to feel or that they are not impediments or opposed to reason, the way they are characterized necessitates that emotion serves a very limited function. If it is true that emotions are not properly subject to impartial standards of evaluation, they seem to be cut off from the substantive ways they engage with the world. Take the example of anger. If there is no better or worse way to feel anger, no standards of evaluation it is properly subject to, we no longer have the grounds to characterize some targets of anger as inappropriate targets (such as a crying infant, or a friend who seems to have snubbed them but was actually just terribly sick when they had planned to meet). We would not be able to make sense of having reason to be angry

(“You’ve done me wrong!”) or having reason not to be angry (“I have to let it go—its eating me up inside.”) We wouldn’t even have the grounds to characterize some instances of anger as unintelligible (for example, if someone got inexplicably angry at a friend who listened sympathetically).

Unable to evaluate emotion, any moral, practical, or epistemic import would be idiosyncratic and relative to the individual. This means they must be largely excluded from public life, given the importance granted to universal objectivity in dominant Western thought.

Iris Marion Young points out that the moral ideal of impartiality corresponds to “the

Enlightenment ideal of the public realm of politics as attaining the universality of a general will

22 that leaves difference, particularity, and the body behind in private realms of family and civil society.”50 Emotion is perceived as inappropriate not only to politics, but other features of public life. Alison Jaggar observes that the only science perceived to produce trustworthy knowledge is that which is “…capable of intersubjective verification. Because values and emotions have been defined as variable and idiosyncratic, positivism stipulated that trustworthy knowledge could be established only by methods that neutralized the values and emotions of individual scientists.”51

Young goes on to observe that “The public realm of citizens achieves unity and universality only by defining the civil individual in opposition to the disorder of womanly nature, which embraces feeling…The universal citizen is disembodied, dispassionate (male) reason. The universal citizen is also white and bourgeois.”52 These ideas trade on and reinforce a conception of emotion as essentially biased and inaccessible. Emotion must be excluded from public life because it is inconstant and idiosyncratic. If our policies depend upon our having the same emotional responses it is thought that we will never reach agreement. Further, our emotions represent to us our own concerns as more important and more urgent than they actually are. At the very least, they are bound up in our inevitably partial view. Like the scientist who must remove personal feelings and values in order to create replicable results, citizens must remove personal feelings to arrive at reasoning that is accessible to anyone. Our emotions are cast as irreducibly personal, inaccessible, and mysterious. Perhaps most importantly, emotions are judged to be entirely inappropriate to the public realm. Emotional expression, topics that cannot be adequately

50 Young, I. (1990). Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton University Press. 97

51 Jaggar, A. (1989). "Love & Knowledge: Emotion in Feminist Epistemology", Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, Issue 32, pg. 152

52 Young, op. cit., 110

23 discussed dispassionately, and those people who are especially emotional will be excluded from public life.

Of course, we are humans with bodies, needs, desires, and emotions. Unable to avoid this fact, we attempt to restrict emotion to private life. Women are the guardians of private life, perhaps because we are thought to be nurturing and emotional, or perhaps because we are not perceived as rational enough for public life. Women, like emotion, are thought to be mysterious.

Insisting enthusiastically upon the immense value of women is useless if neglecting their humanity, their complexity, the necessity of their engagement in public life and their capacity to do so, or limiting their life and contributions to the home. Similarly, enthusiastic acceptance of emotion falls short of proper recognition of its value. We should be cautious of claims that emotion is mysterious or unanalyzable lest these claims function an excuse to avoid taking emotion seriously.

Contemporary views I now turn to identifying the legacy of problematic ideas about emotion in contemporary theorists. In doing so, I don’t mean to imply that these authors entirely reject the claim that emotion has value. None of the work I discuss holds, as the Stoics do, that emotion has no value, that it is always poses a moral or practical problem, or that we ought to minimize our emotional experience as much as possible. Some even take themselves to be in engaged in the work of rehabilitating the emotions from these distorted views. Nevertheless, each theory seems to present a distorted and diminished portrait of the value of emotion. This takes various forms, such as arguing for narrow limitations on the range of intensity or type of emotion that ought to be tolerated, overemphasizing the risk of distortion or immorality associated with emotion, or by arguing that certain kinds of emotional response ought to be excluded from specific places or

24 pursuits. These theorists often explicitly reject older theories that depict emotion as low-value or inevitably flawed but end up subtly reinforcing the same ideas.

One might wonder what makes a limitation unfair or a definition of value too-narrow. It is not my view that any and every emotion counts as appropriate or beneficial, as I discussed in the previous section. So why shouldn’t these theorists simply count as exploring the contours of the range of appropriate emotion—what makes these limitations overly restrictive? I say a bit in answer to this question throughout this chapter, but provide a more thorough argument in

Chapters 3 and 4 that the kinds of judgments that result from these theories are mistaken. For now, I will simply draw attention to the sweeping nature of these claims. For example, there are arguments that we always ought to be cautious about accepting the fittingness of any emotion.

There are arguments that entire types of emotion—such as anger—are never appropriate.

Peter Goldie and Dual Process Theory According to Peter Goldie, philosophers and psychologists alike overestimate the value of emotion.53 He addresses “dual process theory,” according which there are two ways humans process information. What is sometimes called intuitive or fast thinking involves “emotion and imagination, operates fast, does not involve conscious thinking and plays a vital epistemic role in a world in which energy resources are limited and speed of response is of the essence.” Slow or deliberative thinking is “‘cool’, involves conscious deliberation and has as one of its functions operating as a check or balance on intuitive thinking.” These are both cognitive processes and both vitally important. Given that they are both cognitive, Goldie dismisses “the old idea, if there ever was such an idea, of the emotions as mere irrational or arational urges.” Emotional and

53 Goldie, P. (2004). Emotion, Feeling, and Knowledge of the World. In R. Solomon (Ed.), Thinking about Feeling, 91

25 deliberative thinking are apparently meant to be understood as complementary processes, and so, he suggests, these theorists are not guilty of supposing that emotions are inferior to reason.54

However, as presented by Goldie, dual process theory still leaves largely in-tact the notion that emotions are inferior to and subversive of rational thinking. As we saw with the

Stoics, one need not assert that emotions are irrational or arational to come to this conclusion. Of course, according to dual process theory, both processes are necessary. We simply couldn’t do without emotions given the speed at which we must process great quantities of information. But notice that though emotion may be crucially important in enabling action when there is no time to deliberate, they are definitively subordinate to reason. Given that deliberative thinking is meant to “check” intuitive thinking, it seems that though intuitive thinking can filter and triage information and enable quick action, it does not contribute anything new to knowledge or judgment. The deliberative process would eventually get it right, with enough time and data.55 In addition, intuitive thinking has been linked to stereotyping and bias, which is to say: it is unreliable and best to avoid whenever possible.56

Despite the way dual process theory appears to preserve many biased assumptions about emotion, Goldie argues that these theorists (as well as many philosophers of emotion) are too optimistic about the epistemic role of emotion:

54 Goldie, P. (2008) Misleading Emotions. In Brun, G., Doguoglu, U. (Ed.). Epistemology and Emotions, London: Routledge, 149-150

55 There is reason to believe that emotional thinking adds more than just speed to our information processing (if it even makes sense to separate it out from deliberative thinking). For discussion that involves empirical research and case studies, see Damasio, A. (1994). Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: Penguin Group. For an argument that emotion is essential to comprehension of moral concepts see: Little, M. (1995). Seeing and Caring: The Role of Affect in Feminist Moral Epistemology. In Hypatia, 10:3, 117-137

56 Creighton, L. and Gawronski, B. (2013). Dual Process Theories. In Carlston, D (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Social Cognition

“I willingly accept the idea that emotions and intuitive thinking can and do play this role of helping us to manage our way through the world under constraints of finite time and energy resources. But I want to add a more pessimistic note about the role of deliberative thinking as check and balance. The emotions, I will argue, can and often do systematically mislead us…So, we cannot always safely rely on epistemic checks and balances on emotion and intuitive thinking from the slower and ‘cooler’ processes of thought involved in deliberative thinking. Even if the old idea of the emotions as irrational or arational is long gone, we should avoid a recoil into the idea of the emotions as thoroughly ordered, and nicely and reliably aligned with reason. On the contrary, they can both undermine reason and disguise the fact that this is what they are doing.”57 According to Goldie, emotional thinking “skews the epistemic landscape.” When we are emotional, we notice and interpret the world in ways that would make those emotions appropriate. Being angry leads us to regard a comment as an unforgiveable insult when it was really just a trivial slight. Evidence, Goldie writes, “which we might otherwise, through cool and calm deliberative thinking, take to count against our emotion we now ignore, or even take to be confirmatory of our suspicions.”58 We fail to notice these distortions because it is more than just a mistaken judgment: the information intake is itself biased. Given what one registers as relevant information and what one ignores in the heat of anger, the judgment that a comment is a serious insult could be warranted. In a later, calmer moment one may still overlook the mistake since it was not just a bad judgment but biased perception. We have already filtered out the evidence that would have shown the anger to be inapt.

Goldie argues that emotional thinking also “skews the preferential landscape.” Even when one is aware of being emotional, even when one knows what the “voice of cool and calm deliberative thinking” would advise, the emotion can be “motivationally overwhelming.”59

57 Goldie, P. (2008) Misleading Emotions. In Brun, G., Doguoglu, U. (Ed.). Epistemology and Emotions, London: Routledge, 150

58 Ibid., 159

59 Ibid., 160

Goldie offers an example from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night. After a night of drinking, Dick Diver, starts a fight with a taxi driver and is arrested. He is about to get away with a small fine when he punches the arresting officer and is badly beaten. Even though Diver knew that punching the officer would have horrible consequences, he was simply overwhelmed by emotion and unable to do what he knew to be best. He may know in the moment that punching the officer is not his “real” or “considered” preference but it is nevertheless the preference most salient and enticing in the heat of the moment. While deliberative thinking may sometimes mitigate rash behavior—when we can convince ourselves that the consequences are too grave or take a moment to calm down before acting—it is not a reliable corrective because it is frequently only engaged or in control after the emotional moment has passed. By then, Goldie argues, the damage has already been done.

It is not clear exactly what Goldie’s recommendation might be. Emotions play a

“centrally important epistemic role in revealing things about the world.”60 Yet the extent to which they systematically mislead “throws into question the role of our belief-forming capacity in general.” He recommends a “pessimism” about the accuracy of emotional perception but given the practical difficulty of knowing when we are misled, it is not clear what we ought to do about it. In any case, his arguments seem to support the conclusion that not only is it right to question our perceptions in an “emotional” moment, we have reason to question our perceptions even when we are not, given the capacity of the emotions to distort reasoning processes in ways that last long after they have passed.

60 Goldie (2004), op. cit., 92

Martha Nussbaum In the introduction to Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions, Martha

Nussbaum characterizes emotions as “intelligent responses to the perception of value,” going on to observe that if this is correct, emotion “cannot…easily be sidelined in accounts of ethical judgment.”61 Nussbaum claims that emotion is central not just to narrow conceptions of morality but to human flourishing more broadly.62 In Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the

Law, Nussbaum claims that “law without appeals to emotions is virtually unthinkable,” reiterating that emotions are a fundamental part of our humanity, appropriate responses to our lives, and important to embrace not only as individuals but within legal institutions. Despite ready recognition of the intelligence and centrality of the emotions, however, the book is devoted to arguing that (unlike anger and fear) shame and disgust “are especially likely to be normatively distorted.”63 Nussbaum concludes that disgust should almost never have a role in legal considerations and that society has good reason to inhibit shame and protect its citizens from shaming. Though the book concerns the role of these two emotions within the legal sphere, she makes explicit that she does not think the problems of shame and disgust are confined to the law.64

Though anger and fear fare better than disgust and shame in Hiding from Humanity,

Nussbaum makes rather harsh critiques of both anger and fear in more recent work. In Anger and

61 Nussbaum (2001), op. cit., 1

62 Ibid., 31-32

63 Nussbaum, Martha C. (2006). Hiding From Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law. Princeton University Press, 13

64 Ibid, 15-16

Forgiveness, she argues that “anger is always normatively problematic” and rarely useful.65 She is clear that its “limited usefulness does not remove its normative inappropriateness. Nor is it as useful…as it is sometimes taken to be.”66 In The Monarchy of Fear, she claims that fear often

“blocks rational deliberation, poisons hope, and impedes constructive cooperation.”67 Although she acknowledges that fear often has a basis in real threat, she insists it “doesn’t just exaggerate our dangers, it also makes our moment much more dangerous than it would otherwise be, more likely to lead to genuine disasters.” It “displace[s] careful thought about what the real problems are and how to resolve them” and prevents work, hope, listening, and cooperation.68 Fear is also at the root of the toxic capacities of anger, envy, and disgust.69 “More than other emotions, fear needs careful scrutiny and containment if it is not to turn poisonous.”70 She acknowledges that fear can give “good guidance” but only when “filtered by careful and extended public deliberation.”71 “Thinking is hard, fear and blame are easy,”72 she says.

Given her alignment with the Stoics, perhaps it should not come as a surprise that

Nussbaum often conceives of emotion as the root of distortion and chaos and tends toward recommendations to avoid or suppress it. But given her claims that emotions can be appropriate

65 Nussbaum, Martha C. (2016). Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, Justice. New York: Oxford University Press, 5

66 Ibid., 6

67 Nussbaum, Martha C. (2018). The Monarchy of Fear: A Philosopher Looks at Our Political Crisis. Oxford University Press, 1

68 Ibid., 3

69 Ibid., 5

70 Ibid., 4

71 Ibid.

72 Ibid., 6

30 responses and in fact are fundamental to human life, it seems strange to generalize about fear and thought in such a way that suggests opposition. “Thinking well is hard, distorted judgment of all kinds are easy to come by” seems a conclusion that would be more in line with her claims that emotions are a central part of the good life and of a “decent political society.”73 That the value of a large portion of emotional response seems limited to how it serves as a signal for reflection appears to be in tension with her claim that: “If we leave out all the emotional responses that connect us to this world…we leave out a great part of our humanity.”74 Perhaps she has changed her mind. Either way, we are left with a conception of emotion that is not especially positive.

Transforming or transcending anger, and perhaps intense emotions more generally, is also a common theme in Nussbaum’s work. She appears to think that although some emotional responses were useful to past stages of human evolution or social organization, they are no longer needed today. In Anger and Forgiveness, Nussbaum begins by telling the story of the

Furies. In their original form, they are depicted as the incarnation of “unbridled rage.” This species of anger is “…obsessive, destructive, existing only to inflict pain and ill. In its zeal for blood it is subhuman, doglike. The Greeks were far enough removed from fancy domesticated dog breeds and close enough to raw scenes of canine killing to associate the dog, consistently, with hideous disregard for the victim’s pain.”75 Such creatures belong in “some society that does not try to moderate cruelty or limit the arbitrary infliction of torture—surely not in a society that claims to be civilized.”76 But we live in no such society: we live in one with laws and a legal

73 Ibid., 8

74 Nussbaum (2006), op. cit., 7

75 Nussbaum, (2016), op. cit., 5

76 Ibid.

31 system. To fit into such a society, the Furies transform “…from something hardly human, obsessive, bloodthirsty, to something human, accepting of reasons, calm, deliberate, and measured.” After the transformation, the former Furies express themselves “with a gentle- temper” and Nussbaum ceases characterizing their expressions as “passions” in favor of the term

“sentiments.” Post-transformation, we get justice but “…not mayhem; indeed, being precisely targeted, measured, and proportional, it is mayhem’s opposite.”77 This is clearly not just a neutral adaptation to a newfound legal system but real progress. After telling this story, Nussbaum announces that her view on anger “takes its inspiration from the Aecshylean picture I have just sketched.” That is: anger as we know it is no longer appropriate to the society we live in, just as

Aecshylus deemed the Furies were no longer appropriate in his play. Perhaps some (nearly unrecognizable) version of anger has a contemporary role, but getting rid of it as it is often experienced and expressed today would, according to Nussbaum, constitute progress.

Nussbaum also suggests that we have outlived the usefulness of fear and disgust. Fear, she writes, has a “strong tendency to get ahead of us, propelling us into selfish, heedless, antisocial actions…this tendency comes from the evolutionary history and psychological structure of emotion.”78 Disgust is “typically unreasonable…not in line with human life as we know it. That does not mean that disgust did not play a valuable role in our evolution; very likely it did.”79 She goes on to state “Nor does it mean that it does not play a useful function in our current life; very likely it does.” However, after claiming we should be skeptical about the role of disgust in legal institutions, she makes explicit that her argument is “far broader in its concerns

77 Ibid., 8

78 Nussbaum (2018), op. cit., 4

79 Nussbaum (2006), op. cit., 14

32 and aims…It will be my contention that these attitudes are profound threats to the existence and stability of a liberal political culture.”80 One gets the impression that Nussbaum believes we are in a more advanced stage of human history than the one that had use for these emotions and that we will progress even further once we’ve eradicated what is now obsolete.

Jonathan Haidt 81

Jonathan Haidt echoes many of the themes discussed by the previous authors. Like

Nussbaum, he is especially concerned about the appropriateness of “negative” emotions such as anger and fear. Like Goldie, he recommends a broad skepticism about the accuracy of emotional perception, belief-formation, and judgment. Additionally, he argues that emotions are largely detrimental to well-being, claiming that anyone can be “happier, healthier, stronger, and more likely to succeed in pursuing your own goals” by challenging the aptness of emotional responses.82 Haidt is a useful figure for two reasons. First, as a social psychologist, he provides a connection to some of the empirical literature. Although, as I discuss in Chapter 2, I do not think my arguments hinge on the particulars of empirical data, it is important to acknowledge whether and how empirical evidence impacts my arguments. The second reason is that Haidt provides a useful link between philosophical literature and common, everyday evaluations of emotion.

Although a psychologist, much of Haidt’s work is philosophical in nature and makes claims about how to live a good life, how we ought to set up educational institutions to support students living a good life, and what the appropriate role of emotion in human life is. His assumptions

80 Ibid., 15-16

81 The article and book The Coddling of the American Mind is co-authored with Greg Lukianoff but because I cite other work authored solely by Haidt I will discuss these ideas as “Haidt’s view.”

82 Haidt, J. and Lukianoff, G. (2018) The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up A Generation for Failure. New York: Penguin. 14.

33 about and attitudes toward emotion match up well with the philosophical views I have presented thus far. So, when he comments directly on some of the cases I discuss in Chapters 3 and 4, providing examples of judgments that I argue are mistaken, it shows how the evaluations of emotion based on the philosophical theories of Nussbaum, Goldie, and Waldron are likely to result in these mistaken judgments, too. Further, not only does the general public often make the same judgments, several critics I discuss cite Haidt’s work as support for their view. So, we see that problematic views of emotion are not just an issue in philosophical literature, resulting perhaps from theories that have become disconnected from everyday life. Nor, as some philosophers might think, are they merely a result of insufficient reflection or imprecise deliberation. We see the same problem in both formal academic theory and beyond the Ivory tower.

Now, on to Haidt’s view. Haidt is concerned about what he perceives as the rising prevalence of “emotional reasoning.” He calls emotional reasoning a “cognitive distortion,” referencing two different definitions found in psychological literature: “assuming that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are” and “letting your feelings guide your interpretation of reality.” He claims that “critical thinking requires grounding one’s beliefs in evidence rather than in emotion or desire” and thus concludes that people would be best off

“talking [themselves] down from the idea that each…emotional response represents something true or important.” Haidt is worried that concern for emotional well-being creates “…a culture in which everyone must think twice before speaking up, lest they face charges of insensitivity, aggression, or worse” and asks: “Would [students] not be better prepared to flourish if we taught them to question their own emotional reactions, and to give people the benefit of the doubt?”

Later, he addresses the objection that many of his examples of “cognitive distortion” are legitimate responses justified by the many examples of turmoil and injustice in the world. “In this environment,” he observes “practically anyone…could make the case for being anxious, depressed, or outraged.”83 But his response sidesteps the claim that he is wrong about what constitutes a distortion and focuses instead on the practical benefits of a general practice of questioning and calming emotional response. He claims that contemporary patterns of emotional response are (among other things) a “problem of progress:” as modern life enables increased comfort and physical safety, we lower the threshold for what counts as intolerable risk and discomfort. He acknowledges that new generations do face challenges and hardship and ought not be perceived as lazy or spoiled, and that it ought to be acknowledged as progress when we are able to lower the threshold for what counts as intolerable risk and discomfort. Nevertheless, when younger generations are judged to be “weak, whiny, and lacking in resilience” he thinks those critics “may have a point.”84 He goes on:

“…we are not saying that the problems facing students, and young people more generally, are minor or “all in their heads.” We are saying that what people choose to do in their heads will determine how those real problems affect them. Our argument is ultimately pragmatic, not moralistic: Whatever your identity, background, or political ideology, you will be happier, healthier, stronger, and more likely to succeed in pursuing your own goals if you do the opposite of what Misoponos advised. That means seeking out challenges (rather than eliminating or avoiding everything that “feels unsafe”), freeing yourself from cognitive distortions (rather than always trusting your initial feelings), and taking a generous view of other people, and looking for nuance (rather than assuming the worst about people within a simplistic us-versus-them morality).” While Haidt acknowledges that emotions are responses to real events, he does not abandon his claim that those responses tend to be distorted. He urges us to recognize that the

83 Haidt (2018), 12

84 Ibid., 13-14

35 patterns of response perceived to be typical of younger generations are not arbitrary or entirely unfounded, but he still seems to think there is a tendency to overreact to these struggles and emphasizes that resisting them can positively impact resilience, efficacy, and well-being.

Note the broad scope of the practical claim. Anyone, from any background, is supposed to be happier, healthier, stronger, and better able to achieve their goals by refusing to trust their initial feelings. So, feelings must frequently—even typically—distort, or else have very bad effects when they do. But Haidt assumes they distort in a particular way. It is presumed that after gathering and thinking calmly through the relevant evidence one will find a false belief, irrational judgment, or exaggeration that, once corrected, diminishes emotional intensity or disappears it altogether. Correcting cognitive distortions and “see[ing] the world more clearly” leads to less anxiety, depression, and anger—never more.85

The problem of neglected standards Despite important similarities in their theories of emotion—such as recognition that emotion sometimes tracks reality and may also sometimes distort perception—some philosophers come to quite different practical conclusions. I say more about these contrasting views in a moment, but I want to jump ahead for a moment to compare their conclusions with those of the contemporary views I have just described. Amia Srinivasan, for example, agrees with Haidt that anger can be counterproductive to one’s aims and that it can undermine an individual’s well-being. But Haidt recommends practices to mitigate anger while Srinivasan argues that it is important to recognize the way in which apt anger is valuable, even when it is counterproductive. Justin D’Arms agrees with Haidt and Goldie that “emotional error” can

85 Haidt., J and Lukianoff, G (2015). “The Coddling of the American Mind” The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/.

“distort good judgment” and that it “would be a mistake to trust one’s emotional reactions in every case.”86 Goldie concludes that, given the capacity for error, we overvalue the epistemic and practical role of emotion and Haidt argues that everyone would be better off second-guessing their emotional responses. D’Arms, on the other hand, claims that “we are justified in according a defeasible presumption of warrant to our emotional reactions.”87

What explains such different responses to what seem to be roughly the same observations? How do these theorists start from the same place and end up with conclusions that are nearly directly opposed? I think at least part of this can be explained by a failure to attend to the variety of ways emotions are subject to evaluation. Both D’Arms and Srinivasan recognize the many different ways emotions can have value, and identify problems that arise in philosophy of emotion when this nuance is overlooked. I take D’Arms and Srinivasan to be allies in the project of properly valuing the emotions. In the remainder of this chapter, I offer a brief sketch of some of their key insights. I build upon these insights in Chapter 2 and Chapter 5.

D’Arms and Jacobson Justin D’Arms and Daniel Jacobson identify a phenomenon in philosophical writing on emotion which they term “the moralistic fallacy.” The moralistic fallacy involves an inference from the assessment that an emotion is morally wrong to feel to the conclusion that it is inapt, or otherwise neglecting to distinguish between what is morally correct and what is fitting. They describe the standard of fittingness (which I use synonymously with aptness), and how it comes apart from other standards:

86 D’Arms, J. (1999), Empathy and Evaluative Inquiry. In Chicago-Kent Law Review 74:4, pg. 1468

87 Ibid., 2000

“People routinely talk about what is and isn’t funny, shameful, enviable, disgusting, et al. And we sometimes allow that things are funny, despite our failing to muster the relevant emotional response; or that they aren’t really funny, even though we find ourselves amused. The fact that we talk and think this way shows that it matters to us whether our feelings are properly tracking those properties of which they purport to be perceptions…But to use predicates in the way they present things to us, is to be committed to a significant proposition: that we can make sense of a specific sort of criticism of our emotions, which adduces only those considerations bearing on the accuracy of their evaluative presentations…The fact that shame is an unpleasant feeling, for instance, or that it would be counterproductive to feel on some occasion, are perfectly good reasons not to be ashamed which are, nevertheless, irrelevant to whether what one has done is shameful.” 88 There are several important insights here: that there are many ways of evaluating emotion, that they can come apart from each other, and that it matters to us whether our emotions are fitting.

While DJ focus their argument on how philosophers have tended to conflate moral standards with standards of fit, they acknowledge that conflation can happen with other standards (such as counterproductivity, as described above). They clarify that their goal is not to “segregate morality from the emotions, but to sort out and begin to arbitrate between their potentially conflicting concerns,” and advise that “the philosophical study of the emotions must be far more delicate than it has been, in its approach to moral valuation.”89 I agree with this conclusion and share their goal. In Chapter 5 I will argue that attention to “conflicting concerns” is part of the solution to improving our evaluations of emotion.

88 D'Arms, J., & Jacobson, D. (2000). The Moralistic Fallacy: On the 'Appropriateness' of Emotions. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 61(1), 69

89 Ibid., 88

Amia Srinivasan Amia Srinivasan argues that experiencing apt emotion is valuable because it is a way of

“affectively registering or appreciating the world as it is.” 90 She considers victims of oppression, arguing that their anger is about appreciating the injustice in the world:

“Just as appreciating the beautiful or the sublime has a value distinct from the value of knowing that something is beautiful or sublime, there is a value to appreciating the injustice of the world through one’s apt anger – a value that is distinct from that of simply knowing that the world is unjust. Imagine a person who does everything, as it were, by the ethical book – forming all the correct moral beliefs and acting in accordance with all her moral duties – but who is left entirely cold by injustice, feeling nothing in response to those moral wrongs of which she is perfectly aware.”91 Such a person is missing something.92 The notion of appreciating injustice in the world or grasping the practical force of moral concepts explain one way in which feeling apt anger is morally valuable, but it is also a kind of epistemic or intellectual value (as illustrated by

Srinivasan’s analogy to appreciation of what is beautiful).

This argument about the value of apt emotion is part of Srinivasan’s response to those who claim we ought not to feel counterproductive anger.93 She observes that victims of

90 Srinivasan, A. (2018), The Aptness of Anger. Journal of Political Philosophy. 26 (2):132-3

91 Ibid.

92 Margaret Little makes a similar argument in Little, Margaret Olivia (1995). Seeing and Caring: The Role of Affect in Feminist Moral Epistemology. Hypatia 10 (3):127-128. Little claims that the person who never emotionally responds to moral phenomena does not fully grasp moral concepts, that “in order to “see” the moral landscape clearly, in order to discern it fully and properly, one must have certain desires and emotions. Caring, being outraged, being moved to act—all these are part of discerning moral features clearly. To presume it is possible to be “perfectly aware” of moral wrongs without ever experiencing fitting emotional responses “profoundly empties and distorts what is involved in grasping “the point” of morality. More fundamentally, it makes no sense of why we come to use moral concepts, and leaves aside what it is to understand them. A person who never appropriately responds at any level to what he terms cruel or obligatory, I want to argue, does not have autonomous understanding of the concepts he invokes…in these cases, we do not credit the people with understanding the evaluative concepts involved, precisely because they miss their practical force.”

93 She addresses the specific situation of victims of injustice whose anger undermines the goal of dismantling oppression and/or their own well-being. It is my view that her arguments apply more broadly.

39 oppression have often been advised to set aside their anger, since their anger is thought to get in the way of their efforts to dismantle oppression, for example by alienating “would-be allies,” or by undermining the angry individual’s own well-being. The fact that anger is counterproductive is frequently taken to warrant an “all-things-considered prohibition on getting angry.”94 One example is Haidt’s view that people are better off avoiding anger (among other emotions) for prudential reasons. Srinivasan resists this move, arguing that absent further explanation, we ought not to assume that it is better to forgo anger simply because it is counterproductive. Given her argument that feeling apt emotion is a way of appreciating the world as it is, anger that is both apt and counterproductive constitutes a substantive normative conflict. We need a further argument before determining whether to favor the value of feeling apt anger or the prudential value of resisting it.

In the cases Srinivasan is concerned with, there are also additional moral considerations.

She argues that being forced to choose between apt anger and acting prudentially is itself a form of injustice, which she terms “affective injustice.” The wrong of this injustice lies in that fact that:

“it forces people, through no fault of their own, into profoundly difficult normative conflicts – a Sophie’s choice between self-preservation and justified rage. Insofar as we have basic human entitlements to both self-preservation and full emotional lives – lives that allow us to exercise our capacity to aptly respond to the world – affective injustice represents a violation of our basic humanity.”95 Further, Srinivasan points out that there is a moral insensitivity in urging people who have been treated unjustly not to “indulge” counterproductive anger. It suggests that rather than a

94 Srinivasan, op. cit., 127

95 Ibid., 16

40 serious injustice, the victim faces a merely practical problem. It also suggests the responsibility for avoiding the bad effects of counterproductive anger lies with the victim of injustice. Though the practical advice not to get angry may be good advice, she argues that there is a risk of

“obscuring the fact that this is advice is good advice only because of unjust social arrangements in which [those urging them to avoid anger] are themselves often complicit.”96 But the solution is not as straightforward as simply embracing apt anger. Recall that Srinivasan has granted that this is genuinely counterproductive anger. Moreover, considering the opposing advice: “‘nurse your anger!’…we hear a lack of care for the suffering agent herself; we detect a threat that she will be instrumentalised for a political cause.”97 Although the practical argument risks moral insensitivity, encouraging victims of oppression to always feel apt anger seems to demonstrate a lack of concern for what constant anger could mean for their well-being.

There are now at least four different standards on the table: whether an emotion is apt, whether there are moral reasons to feel or avoid it, whether it contributes to or undermines well- being, and whether it is conducive to or subversive of practical aims. These concerns can come into conflict with each other and sometimes even along a single dimension (for example: there is much to be said for the moral value of anger and also moral reasons to avoid feeling it).

Srinivasan’s view provides insight into why it is important to consider the various ways an emotion can have value: one might neglect to provide crucial arguments, obscure important considerations, or overlook concepts (such as affective injustice) without adequate attention to these nuances. I am in agreement with Srinivasan’s view, and in Chapter 2 consider how her

96 Ibid., 14

97 Ibid., 14

41 arguments apply to other kinds of cases. Her view is also relevant to cases of apt counterproductive anger that come up in Chapters 3 and 4.

Conclusion It is a mistake for the assessment that an emotion is bad or disadvantageous along one dimension to be taken as decisive evidence that it is wrong, all things considered, to feel or express. Given the variety of standards and the possibility for conflict, the tendency to make this mistake shrinks the range of what is considered appropriate emotion considerably, since any one criticism of an emotion is enough to render it inappropriate. This tendency both reveals and perpetuates the legacy of distorted ideas about emotion. If observation of a single disadvantage results in the failure to properly account for other ways an emotion is appropriate or useful, that suggests an exceptional willingness to accept the claim that emotions are harmful or distorting, a readiness to abandon the possibility that they are of value. This problem is compounded when various evaluative standards are conflated. If D’Arms and Jacobson are right about the moralistic fallacy, the problem isn’t just that any single criticism of an emotion is enough to render it all- things-considered inappropriate, assessing an emotion to be inappropriate by one standard may lead to (unjustified) negative assessments along other dimensions as well. Expanding the conclusion of D’Arms and Jacobson, it is my view that the philosophical study of emotion (and our everyday evaluations) must be far more delicate than it has been not only in its approach to moral valuation, but in its approach to emotional valuation, period.

In the next chapter, I argue that intense emotions are commonly undervalued as a result of this problematic historical legacy and failure to attend to the variety of evaluative standards. In

Chapter 3, I argue that several common judgments of emotional responses to oppression are mistaken. In Chapter 4, I argue that these mistakes are consistent with the contemporary views

42 discussed here (in Chapter 1) and are the result of anti-emotion bias. I also address how this bias is a mechanism that upholds certain kinds of oppression. In Chapter 5, I return to the variety of evaluative standards, arguing that they deserve more attention in our theories and everyday judgment. Attending to this variety is likely to result in greater appreciation of the complexity of emotion, to expand our conception of the range of emotion that is valuable and appropriate, and is also an important part of the project of dismantling racist and sexist oppression.

CHAPTER 2: DON’T TELL ME TO CALM DOWN: A DEFENSE OF INTENSE EMOTIONS

“The passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways and dangerous only in one, through their excess.” Christian Nestell Bovee

Introduction In this chapter, I argue that intense emotions are undervalued as a result of being consistently subject to unfair criticism or assumption. There are two general categories of unfair criticism I shall identify. First, intense emotion is often assumed to be an overreaction. Second, it is frequently charged that intense emotions are especially likely to pose rational, moral, or practical problems. There is a tendency to treat the judgement that an intense emotion poses such a problem as a decisive reason not to feel it. Because intense emotion is frequently presumed to be excessive or disadvantageous in these ways, it is frequently assessed as inappropriate to feel.

The overall effect of these tendencies is that the threshold at which an emotion is judged too intense is lower than it ought to be.

I first consider the association of intense emotion with excess, arguing that it is unjustified to assume that intense emotion is excessive (that is, too intense). Then I turn to the following assumption: intense emotion is typically harmful or otherwise disadvantageous and thus we ought to avoid or moderate it. In response, I suggest that the potential value of intensity gives us reason to be skeptical of generalizations about the harms of intense emotion, and that

44 such generalizations are not justified by empirical evidence. Then, I apply Srinivasan’s arguments about apt, counterproductive anger to apt, disadvantageous intense emotion. Even if an intense emotion is disadvantageous, additional argument is required to justify the conclusion that we ought not to feel it.

Intense Emotion and Excess Intense emotion is often associated with excess. Sometimes high-intensity appears to be conflated with excess. Sometimes high-intensity is assumed to be typically excessive. In this section, I evaluate both of these cases. First, I consider the possibility that intense emotion is always excessive. I ultimately reject the claim that high-intensity is always excessive and conclude that most probably do not hold this view, though it sometimes seems to be suggested.

Then, I consider the possibility that intense emotion is typically excessive. That intense emotions are usually excessive is a frequent assumption in the literature. I consider two possible justifications for this assumption and argue that we do not, in fact, have reason to believe that intense emotion is typically excessive.

Consider how Aaron Ben Ze’ev characterizes intense emotional states:

“In intense emotional states, we are somewhat similar to children. A young child will promise to jump off a tower tomorrow if you give her a cake today, not only because the child does not understand the concepts of tomorrow and promise but because the child’s interest is mainly focused on the immediate partial situation. Therefore, young children have difficulties in working out that someone watching a scene from a different vantage point may not be able to see all they see. Like children, our emotional perspectives are highly partial and involved. Our immediate situation, no matter how grave or insignificant it is, is the only thing that concerns us when we are in intense emotional states. We may believe that the world is pointing its fingers at a pimple on our nose.”98 In this passage, intense emotional states are depicted as excessive, among other things. They are not necessarily a response to the significance of an event: intense emotions may be about things

98 Ben Ze’ev, A. (2000). The Subtlety of Emotions. MIT Press. 36

45 as trivial as a pimple on one’s nose. Intense emotions fail to be sensitive to the broader considerations that might reveal them to be disproportionate. Elaborating on this illustration, Ben

Ze’ev claims that “Highly emotional people overestimate the degree to which events are related to them and are excessively absorbed in the event’s personal meaning” (emphasis mine).99

At times, Ben Ze’ev seems to equate proportionality with mild or moderate levels of emotion. For example, in discussing the nature and value of anger he says: “Like other emotions, anger is functional when it is in the right proportion, for example, when it is expressed in a socially constructive way without becoming highly aroused. Intense anger may be harmful, as are other types of excess.”100 While the “right proportion” should just mean whatever level of anger fits situation, highly aroused anger is presumed not to be in the right proportion. Intense anger is characterized as “a type of excess.”

It should only take a moment’s reflection to see that intense emotion is not always in excess. Some events are extremely significant. It is hard to imagine that a parent, highly emotional in the wake of their child’s death, is excessively absorbed in the meaning of this event.

Life as they know it is changed forever. It is implausible that their high emotional arousal indicates a lack of proportion. Their intense emotional response is not a mistake or an overreaction but a fitting response to what has happened. High-intensity is proportionate to the life-changing significance of the death. This is Aristotle’s view, of course. Anticipating misinterpretations of the Doctrine of the Mean, he emphasizes that virtue is not an arithmetic

99 Ibid., 37

100 Ibid., 386

46 mean, but “relative to us,” and varies by person and circumstance.101 Further, he claims that often “one extreme is nearer and liker to the intermediate.”102 It is fitting for the intensity of an emotional response to an extreme event (such as the death of one’s child) to be extreme.

No doubt, Ben Ze’ev would agree. But if we assume that he is not committed to the claim that all intense emotion is excessive, what should we make of the passages quoted above? I think it is plausible that they are simply the result of careless overgeneralization. If so, it is nevertheless notable. This mistake reveals, I think, the tendency to readily accept or even to assume by default that intense emotions are excessive, grounded in the belief that intense emotions are rarely apt. However, before concluding the apparent conflation is a simple (if telling) mistake, I want to explore one other possible explanation for the association of intensity with excess.

Two Perspectives The view I want to consider is this: that from a disinterested perspective, intense emotions are always excessive, but that this is not the only perspective in human life. This might make sense of both the apparent claim that high emotional intensity is always excessive and the seemingly obvious fact that intense emotions are at least sometimes fitting. Emotions are often associated with a partial perspective in two ways: they are bound up in our own narrow, incomplete viewpoint and they arise from a personal, interested perspective. 103 Consider two things a person might say: “This is the most dreadful thing that has ever happened to me.” Or:

“This is the most dreadful thing that has ever happened.” The first statement could plausibly be

101 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, II.6

102 Ibid., II.8

103 Ben Ze’ev, op. cit., 35

47 true. Made from a partial perspective, the claim only compares the dreadful event in question to whatever other dreadful things have happened to that specific individual up until that point. The second (although an extremely difficult sort of claim to evaluate) is likely false; what are the chances the most dreadful event in the entire history of the world—or the universe—is happening now, witnessed by this individual? Perhaps we might call it an overreaction.

Ben Ze’ev claims that “the intensity of emotions is achieved by their focus upon a limited group of objects”104 and that “emotions with a more partial focus are usually associated with greater peak intensity.”105 Higher intensity can be correlated to greater partiality in either of these ways. The greater the perceived personal significance of an event, the more intense the emotion.

One is likely to be sad when someone else’s child dies but devastated when it is one’s own child.

And, the more partial the focus, the more intense the emotion. One is more deeply moved by the story of a particular victim of a natural disaster than consideration of the general suffering it has brought upon a community. Ben Ze’ev connects this partiality-driven intensity directly to excess, asserting that “because of…their partiality, emotions are quite intense and hence readily lend themselves to excesses and distortions.”106

But Ben Ze’ev acknowledges that it is not a bad thing for the emotional perspective to be

“highly partial.” Sometimes we need quick responses to events as they unfold and the fact that emotional responses narrow the range of what is cognitively and motivationally salient is highly beneficial. Intimate relationships are deeply valuable and necessarily partial. To make sense of

104 Ibid.

105 Ibid., 118

106 Ibid., 167

48 life requires engaging with the personal significance of events. So, to claim that high emotional intensity is brought on by a partial perspective need not imply a critique of the parent overwhelmed with grief or the person who is terrified of a life-threatening situation. To understand more clearly how partiality might help explain the association of intense emotions with excess, consider what Ben Ze’ev has to say about balancing the partial emotional perspective with a broader, “intellectual” perspective:

“In light of the partial nature of emotions, we may reduce emotional intensity by broadening our scope, and increase the intensity by further limiting it. Counting to ten before venting our anger enables us to adopt a broader perspective that may reduce anger. A broader perspective is typical of people who can calmly consider multiple aspects of a situation; it is obviously not typical of people who experience an intense emotional reaction to the situation…Although emotional partiality may sometimes lead to distorted proportions, it is not necessarily so. Finding the right proportion between the partial emotional perspective and more general perspectives is difficult, but nevertheless the presence of both is crucial for human life.”107 The idea, then, is that there are multiple perspectives a person can take. They are oriented differently and serve different functions. The partial, emotional perspective focuses on the immediate situation, narrow targets, the personal significance of an event. The disinterested, intellectual perspective, on the other hand, is “detached.” It does not privilege the immediate situation or any particular person: “it looks at all implications of a current state; it takes us far beyond the current situation…we are required not to be influenced by that situation, but to consider all other possible situations in an objective manner.”108 It might seem plausible that from the detached perspective, emotional responses are always in excess. From a partial perspective, the significance of the events we respond to emotionally is amplified. What we experience now as overwhelmingly dreadful may barely be remembered in a decade. What seems

107 Ibid., 38-39

108 Ibid, 39

49 an outrage to me would seem only a minor form or unfairness if I considered everyone’s interests

(and not just my own). But of course, we have particular attachments and interests. The partial perspective is necessary and must be balanced with a broader perspective. It would do little good to constantly take an impartial perspective, were it even possible.

I think there are two major reasons this view cannot work. First, narrower perspectives are not always correlated with higher intensity. Ben Ze’ev himself acknowledges this:

“There are, however, situations in which broadening our perspective may intensify emotions. In these situations we are usually concerned with strong events having wide implications for our life; understanding these implications may indicate that we are actually confronted with an event that is much stronger than that perceived through a narrow perspective.”109 Sandra Bartky offers a good example of how a broader perspective can intensify emotion in her writing on the phenomenology of feminist consciousness. As one becomes conscious of sexist oppression as a feminist, one may find an increase in the intensity of guilt, sorrow, frustration, anxiety, and outrage.110 What one previously took for a personal struggle—for example, one’s ideas not being taken seriously at work—feels worse upon learning it isn’t actually personal but affects other women, too. What seemed like an entirely ordinary state of affairs—being responsible for nearly all of the housework and childcare—is now infuriating. It is the very expansion of one’s perspective that is responsible for this increase in emotion. One cannot become aware of systemic injustice exclusively through the narrow lens of one’s own experience. The fact that a broader perspective sometimes intensifies emotion casts doubt on the

109 Ibid., 231-2

110 Bartky, S. (1975). Toward a Phenomenology of Feminist Consciousness. Social Theory and Practice 3 (4):425- 439.

50 view I have been considering (that intense emotion is always excessive from a detached perspective).

There are also cases in which a broad or detached perspective does not necessarily change the perception of whether an emotion is apt. The bereaved parents’ grief will seem no less appropriate from a stranger’s perspective, though the stranger may not share in those intense emotions. Though sometimes a broader view may offer a different sense of the significance of an event, it does not always do so.111 So, the notion that high-intensity is always excessive from the partial perspective is implausible. We ought to conclude that there is no reason to conflate high- intensity with excess and presume that it is simply an error where Ben Ze’ev seems to do so.

A dubious generalization It is plausible that the error of conflating high-intensity with excess is the result of assuming that intense emotions are usually overreactions even if it is not true that they always are. I think Ben Ze’ev’s view is most charitably interpreted along these lines. Quoted above, he says the intensity of emotion lends itself to distortion and excess but that it is not inevitably distorting or excessive. I think we ought to resist this claim—that intense emotions tend to be overreactions. First of all, though this claim is frequently taken for granted, it ought to be argued for rather than assumed. There are two kinds of arguments I can imagine might support such a claim. First, the claim might be warranted if it is true that conditions that make intense emotions appropriate are rare. Second, there might be reason to believe that intense emotions are typically overreactions if it can be demonstrated empirically. One thought is that how common intense

111 What I mean to distinguish here is how some responses seem clearly apt, even from a detached perspective, while others require being partial to make sense of. We can contrast the parents’ grief with how sadness at loss of a basketball game appears from the detached perspective. Sadness at a lost game can be fitting only if one cares about basketball, and in particular, favors the team that lost.

51 responses are is an empirical matter. If we accept the first claim—that intense emotions only rarely appropriate—but there is empirical data that suggests that intense responses are not rare, it seems that most of those responses must be overreactions. Even if the first claim is not accepted—if intense emotions are thought to be regularly appropriate—the frequency of overreaction might still seem an empirical matter.

Consider the first claim. It might seem intuitive that events which are significant enough to warrant intense emotions are few and far between. Day-to-day life might seem to some a mostly steady and calm affair. Perhaps mundane events don’t seem to call for an intense response and exceptional events seem rare. More technically, if significance is inherently a somewhat comparative concept, there are only so many events that can count as significant enough to warrant highly-intense emotion before the concept loses all meaning. But I think we can acknowledge that significant events happen on a fairly regular basis without any serious risk to the concept. People despair at terminal diagnoses and grieve the deaths of loved ones. People become pregnant to their horror or overwhelming joy. People celebrate the birth of new life and long-awaited professional successes, cope with the shock and sadness of betrayal, and deal with the shame and guilt of moral failure. People marry and divorce. They get into car crashes, big arguments, and financial trouble. That is to say nothing of the terrible harms and great moral evils one becomes privy to just by turning on the news, if they are not already a feature of one’s own life. These kinds of events plausibly make various emotions of considerable intensity appropriate on a regular basis.

Now consider whether there is empirical support for the claim that there is a high frequency of overreactions. People might judge overreaction to be quite common given their own experience. Perhaps they have a short-temper and judge in their cooler moments that their anger

52 is typically an overreaction. Perhaps they live with a teenager who seems prone to misery and despair in response to apparently trivial matters. Perhaps they are a graduate student observing their peers overcome by shame for asking perfectly reasonable questions and making perfectly normal mistakes or by anxiety in response to everything from a faculty member’s cryptic comment to whether they are being perfectly consistent in their grading to the worry that their responses in a Q+A session lacked clarity. A person might notice what they perceive to be a lot of overreaction and think that if it were measured, we would find that intense emotions are statistically overreactions.

As far as I can tell, there is no data that directly supports any kind of claim about the frequency of overreaction. And this is to be expected—whether intense emotions are overreactions is not a straightforward empirical issue. To measure whether intense responses were too-intense, psychologists would need to determine what constitutes the appropriate level of intensity. Though some kinds of normative assumptions are inevitable in empirical research, most researchers are careful to avoid assumptions as straightforwardly value-laden as this one. If there were data based upon such standards, we would have reason to question its validity. After all, if I am right that the threshold of what counts as an overreaction is too low, that warped standard would infect the empirical results.

So, there is not (and could not be) reliable data that directly demonstrates that intense emotions tend to be overreactions. Is there any data that suggests there is reason to believe that intense emotions are frequently overreactions? One kind of research that seems relevant is that which has to do with high-affect intensity or emotional reactivity. One reason to think high intensity may often suggest too much intensity is because some psychopathologies are associated with high affect-intensity. For example, high affect-intensity is prevalent in people with bipolar

53 disorder and cyclothymia.112 There is some evidence that people with bipolar disorder are more emotionally reactive than a “healthy” control group.113 There are also aspects of the assessments for affect-intensity or reactivity that associate high intensity with excess. Here are some examples of questionnaire items: “When I get angry it’s easy for me to still be rational and not overreact.”114 “People tell me that my emotions are often too intense for the situation.”115 These items seem to imply that high intensity correlates with an overreaction.

However, we should not make too much of this data. First, there is also evidence that some people with bipolar disorder (and other mood disorders) are less emotionally reactive than control groups.116 We should also be careful not to characterize high affect-intensity as pathological even if it is prevalent in people with psychological disorders. Depression is more prevalent in women than men but I should hope it is obvious that being a woman is not pathological.117 Additionally, the self-report items invoke normative assumptions and rely upon the accuracy of a person’s self-perception and the judgment of those around them.

Further, consideration of other assessment items reveals that the meaning of high-affect intensity is ambiguous. Many items on the assessment ask whether a person feels things “easily”

112Larsen, R. and Diener, E. (1987). Affect Intensity as an Individual Difference Characteristic: A Review. In Journal of Research in Personality, 21(1). 33

113 Henry, C., Phillips, M., Leibenluft, E., M'Bailara, K., Houenou, J., & Leboyer, M. (2012). Emotional dysfunction as a marker of bipolar disorders. Frontiers in bioscience (Elite edition), 4, 2622-30.

114 Larsen, op. cit., 35

115 Nock, MK., Wedig, MM., Hooley, JM., (2008). The emotion reactivity scale: development, evaluation, and relation to self-injurious thoughts and behaviors. In Behavior Therapy. 39(2):107-16

116 Henry, et. al., op. cit.

117 Albert P. R. (2015). Why is depression more prevalent in women? In Journal of psychiatry & neuroscience. 40(4), 219-21.

54 or “deeply” or “more often/intensely than others.”118 These kinds of comparisons leave open whether high-reactivity counts as inapt or pathological in some way. The standard to which an individual is compared is whatever the evaluator perceives to be most common or typical. But what is most common or typical is not necessarily better than more intense responses. It is possible that someone who feels more intensely is more attuned to what is fitting: for example, some research indicates that people characterized as highly-sensitive (which includes but is not limited to emotional sensitivity) may be more sensitive to subtle perceptual changes.119 Or, consider another questionnaire item: “I feel bad when I tell a lie.” Feeling bad seems an apt response to lying. The person who reports that they “always” feel bad will have a higher emotional reactivity score than the person who reports they “never” do, yet this does not seem to be evidence of overreaction. Other items such as “Sad movies touch me deeply,” “When things are going good I feel “on top of the world,” and “When I know I have done something very well,

I feel relaxed and content rather than excited and elated” are ambiguous.120 It does not seem better or worse to be excited about success rather than contented. A high level of affect-intensity may result from a combination of responses that are apt, inapt, and neutral, so even absent concerns about the accuracy of self-report or assumed normative standards we cannot conclude that intense responses tend to be overreactions.

118 Becerra, R. and Campitelli, G. (2013). Emotional Reactivity: Critical Analysis and Proposal of a New Scale. In International Journal of Applied Psychology, 3(6): 161-168

119 Jagiellowicz, J, Xu, X, Aron A, Aron E, Cao G, Feng T, Weng X. (2011). The trait of sensory processing sensitivity and neural responses to changes in visual scenes. In Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. 6(1): 38-47

120 Becerra and Campitelli op. cit.

Intensity and Disadvantage Thus far, I have argued that it is unjustified to assume that intense emotions are generally overreactions. Now, I turn to a different assumption in the literature: that intense emotions are disadvantageous or harmful, whether or not they are apt. Intense emotion is often thought disadvantageous insofar as it distorts perception, leads to immoral action, is counterproductive to one’s aims, or undermines one’s well-being. In this section, I offer some examples of these assumptions in the literature. Then, I discuss a prescriptive conclusion commonly drawn from these claims: that we generally ought to avoid or moderate high-intensity emotions. In response,

I suggest that the potential value of intensity gives us reason to be skeptical of assumptions or generalizations about the harms of intense emotion. Then, I apply Srinivasan’s arguments about apt, counterproductive anger to apt, disadvantageous intense emotion concluding that even if an intense emotion is disadvantageous, additional argument is required to justify the conclusion that we ought not to feel it.

Intense emotions are sometimes assumed to distort perception. Peter Goldie claims that emotion skews the epistemic landscape. Cheshire Calhoun claims that “strong emotions…are precisely the sorts of emotional responses most likely to exhibit epistemic subjectivity,” that is: strong emotions are most likely to reflect biased, partial, inaccurate perceptions of reality.121

Haidt claims that emotions are often “cognitive distortions.” Recall Ben Ze’ev’s statements that in intense emotional states it is difficult to distinguish fantasy from reality, that intense emotions lend themselves to distortion, that highly emotional people overestimate the degree to which

121 Calhoun, C. (2004). Subjectivity and Emotion. In R. Solomon (Ed.), Thinking about Feeling (109-110)

56 events are related to them and are excessively absorbed in the event’s personal meaning. He ties these disadvantages to intensity in the following passage:

“The intense feeling dimension in emotions often tends to override our ability to make sound cognitive assessments. When we are in the grip of intense feelings, some of our intellectual faculties no longer function normally. The more intense the emotional state, the easier it is for cognitive distortions to occur. Accordingly, it has been claimed that emotions are blind; they do not look beyond immediate gratification. All the above may function as obstacles to adequate knowledge of our emotional context…”122 Intense emotions are also thought to be counterproductive in various ways. For example,

Haidt claims that certain intense emotional responses (such as outrage, anxiety, and depression) undermine happiness, health, and resilience.123 Goldie claims that emotion can be

“motivationally overwhelming” in contrast to the “voice of cool and calm deliberative thinking.”124 Ben Ze’ev observes that “professionalism is simply not associated with excessive emotional intensity, which prevents normal functioning”125 and that “In most circumstances, the moral demand is to avoid the more general negative emotions, such as hate, disgust, and contempt, and to moderate the intensity of the more specific ones, such as anger and resentment.”126 In the following passages, he once again ties these disadvantages to intensity:

“Emotional responses are often expressed in extreme behavior and it is this type of behavior whose moral consequences are most harmful. Accordingly, intellectual reasoning may allow emotions to direct our moral conduct as long as these are, for

122 Ben Ze’ev, op. cit., 53

123 Anxiety and depression are of course characterized as disorders and not simple emotional responses. However, I think it is clear that Haidt has in mind not just diagnosed disorders but instances of the kinds of intense emotional responses that may be involved with them.

124 Ben Ze’ev, op. cit., 160

125 Ibid., 180

126 Ibid., 403

example, moderate; when the responses tend to become extreme, we should in most cases consult the intellect before behaving in light of them.”127 “The instability associated with intense emotions is revealed by their interference with activities requiring a high degree of coordination or control. One cannot easily thread a needle while trembling with fear or seething with anger. When we are in the grip of a strong emotion, our intellectual faculties no longer function normally, with the result that we “lose our heads” and act in ways which differ from our norm.”128 Jeremy Waldron claims that while intense emotion is not necessarily excluded by civility, it can be. Waldron claims that “anger always threatens to overwhelm the civility. For some people, the civility might threaten to drain the anger.”129 According to Waldron, “venting anger” harms the judicial process.130 When an interviewer suggests that Waldron’s view seems to treat as equivalent those angry at being subject to discrimination and anger at being disagreed with, he insists: “Nobody is talking about equivalence. All one is talking about is the indulgence of anger, deeply felt anger on both sides. The talk about ‘which is equivalent to what’ is a little bit like the childish talk of ‘he started it’.”131 So the problem, it seems, is that the anger is “deeply felt,” not that it is inapt.

The prescriptive conclusion What conclusions are drawn from all of these supposed disadvantages? Ben Ze’ev repeatedly suggests intense emotions typically ought to be moderated.132 In the following

127 Ibid., 272

128 Ibid., 33

129 Smellie, P. (August 25, 2017). Kiwi philosopher Jeremy Waldron on Trump and the spiralling savagery of politics. Noted. Accessed January 31, 2019 at: https://www.noted.co.nz/currently/politics/kiwi-philosopher-jeremy- waldron-on-trump-and-the-spiralling-savagery-of-politics/

130 Rashbrooke, M. (August 12, 2017). The indulgence of anger: NZ philosopher Jeremy Waldron on why politics needs more civility. The Spinoff. Accessed January 31, 2019 at: https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/12-08-2017/the- indulgence-of-anger-nz-philosopher-jeremy-waldron-on-why-politics-needs-more-civility/

131 Ibid.

132 For example: Ben Ze’ev, 272 and 403

58 passage he affirms that, given the presumed turmoil, lack of control, and harm associated with intense emotion, one typically ought to avoid them or moderate their intensity:

“Emotional intelligence involves flexibility and comfortable relationships— these are not typical of very intense emotions. Also, the ability to stop something we have started and found to be harmful, which is typical of emotional intelligence, is not typical of highly emotional people. Accordingly, we may assume that emotional intelligence will not be very high both among indifferent people, whose distance from the emotional circumstances will make it hard for them to identify such circumstances, and very sensitive people, whose tremendous emotional involvement will make it hard for them to keep the distance required for emotional regulation. I would speculate, therefore, that people with high emotional intelligence will have moderate emotional intensity; people at the extremes will have low emotional intelligence.”133 The conclusion that intense emotions ought to be avoided or moderated is also found in the literature on emotion regulation. Emotional regulation has to do with one’s ability to manage emotions and involves all kinds of skills and strategies that inhibit, dull, or (theoretically) amplify emotion. For example, one can attend to or seek out a stimulus or avoid it, such as choosing to watch a scary movie or looking away from an injured animal. Other familiar examples include exercise, drug-use, meditation, making jokes, distracting oneself, or attempting to withhold judgment about an emotion (for example, a mindfulness practice used in Dialectical

Behavior Therapy involves observing and naming the emotions one is experiencing without labeling them as good or bad). Theoretically emotions can be up-regulated (amplified, lengthened, or cultivated) or down-regulated (dulled, decreased, inhibited, or shortened), and they can also be delayed. But much of the research and discussion surrounding emotional regulation focuses on down-regulation of intense emotion with very little said about the up- regulation of mild emotion, suggesting that calm and restraint is thought to reflect ideal functioning, or “emotional intelligence.”

133 Ibid., 181

Consider the framing and focus of emotion regulation research. For example, despite one article’s claim that proper functioning ought to “permit spontaneous reactions as well as the ability to delay spontaneous reactions as needed,” much more attention is given to the ability to delay emotion than the capacity to feel spontaneous emotion (with some important exceptions).134 A review of the literature characterizes emotion regulation as efforts to “avoid being carried away or ‘hijacked’ by emotion.”135 Another article introduces the idea of emotion regulation by discussing the possibility of “turning emotion off.” 136 The characterization of emotion regulation frames the discussion around downregulation. This is reflected in downregulation making up a larger proportion of examples.137 Discussions of emotion regulation in babies tend to revolve around the ability to self-soothe: to calm down the intensity of unpleasant experiences or emotions (for example by sucking on a thumb or clutching a safety blanket). Many articles equate healthy emotion regulation with self-control or focus on the ability to avoid tantrums.138

An objection to the prescriptive conclusion The conclusion that we typically ought to moderate or avoid intense emotion may seem hard to resist. Most of us are familiar with the kinds of harm or disadvantage discussed here: recall an argument that got out of hand in the heat of anger, a lovestruck friend totally blind to

134 Cole, P., Michel, M., & Laureen O'Donnell Teti. (1994). The Development of Emotion Regulation and Dysregulation: A Clinical Perspective. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 59(2/3), 73- 100. doi:10.2307/1166139

135 Koole, S. (2009) The psychology of emotion regulation: An integrative review, COGNITION AND EMOTION, 23:1. 4-41

136 Gross, J. (2015) Emotion Regulation: Current Status and Future Prospects, Psychological Inquiry, 26:1, 1-26

137 Ibid.

138 How Can We Help Kids With Self-Regulation? Child Mind Institute Accessed January 8, 2019 at: https://childmind.org/article/can-help-kids-self-regulation/

60 their beloved’s major flaws, or simply how awful it felt last time you were mired in sorrow. But I think we ought to resist this conclusion for several reasons. First: many of these claims—that intensity is the cause of the problems, that intensity typically poses these problems, or that it is at a higher risk for these problems—are simply assumed. There are two reasons to be skeptical of this assumption: the first to do with the empirical literature and the second to do with philosophical arguments about the value of emotion. Finally, even if we grant the claim that intense emotions are typically disadvantageous, the conclusion is not yet warranted.

What the empirical literature says To begin, consider the empirical literature. Although we will not entirely escape the previously-discussed challenges involved with empirical data, there is reason to be a bit more optimistic in this case. Measuring whether someone is, for example, more likely to achieve a particular goal in a particular emotional state seems more straightforwardly empirical than the normative question of whether an emotional state is apt. It seems plausible, then, that empirical data could provide support for the claim that intense emotions are typically disadvantageous.

Does it indeed support this conclusion?

The empirical data is, at best, a mixed bag. At the very least, it seems clear that the broad generalization about intense emotion is not supported. The effects vary depending upon the particular emotion and the particular disadvantage in question. For example: do intense emotions undermine well-being? Intense emotion seems to have both positive and negative effects on physical health. On the one hand, intense anger has been linked to heart disease.139 High affect- intensity has been linked to higher levels of psychosomatic distress symptoms, such as

139 Moyers, B. (1995). Healing and the Mind. New York: Broadway Books.

61 headaches.140 But intense emotion (both positive and negative) has also been linked to positive impacts on the immune system.141 Individuals with high-affect intensity do not score lower on measures on happiness or life satisfaction than those with lower affect intensity.142 Are intense emotions counterproductive? It is unclear: there is empirical evidence linking intense emotion to both positive and negative effects on decision-making.143 Some data suggests that people with high affect intensity may perform better in emotionally charged or high-arousal situations than people with low-intensity.144

Effects also seem to differ depending upon how a person thinks about emotion. For example, one study found that when fear of emotions was low, intense negative emotion reduced symptoms of Generalized Anxiety Disorder.145 Stress is often connected to maladaptive behaviors and harmful effects on health, but it appears that people who conceive of stress responses as normal and useful experience better health, well-being, and productivity, even when under a lot of stress.146 In a large cross-cultural study, people were happier when they

140 Becerra and Campitelli, op. cit., 33-34

141 Moyers, op. cit.

142 Becerra and Campitelli, op. cit., 33-34

143 Seo, M. and Barrett, L. (2007). BEING EMOTIONAL DURING DECISION MAKING—GOOD OR BAD? AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION. In Academy of Management Journal. 50: 4, 923–940.

144 Becerra and Campitelli, op. cit., 33-34

145 Sugiuraa, Y. and Sugiuraa, T. (2015). Emotional intensity reduces later generalized anxiety disorder symptoms when fear of anxiety and negative problem-solving appraisal are low. In Behaviour Research and Therapy. 71, 27-33

146 Of course, stress is not synonymous with emotion but they seem to be intimately related. A physiological stress response may overlap with the physiological aspects of an emotional response. Some stressors may also be objects of emotion (for example, various kinds of threats that make fear or anger appropriate). McGonigal, K. (2015). The Upside of Stress: Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good At It. New York: Avery

62 experienced the emotions they wanted to feel (regardless of whether this included positive or negative emotion).147

Effects may also depend on how others perceive one’s emotional response. For example, women, but not men, are perceived as less effective leaders when they express anger.148 Men become more influential when they express anger in group deliberations, while expressing anger detracts from the influence and perceived credibility of women and African-Americans (but all groups were rated as having the same emotional intensity).149 In one set of studies, anger was connected to unsuccessful negotiations, but the negative effect of anger was shown to be

“moderated” by perceptions of selfishness and inappropriateness.150 This suggests that intense anger may not function as an impediment to negotiation if it is perceived as appropriate and unselfish.

So, the empirical literature certainly does not support the broad generalization that intense emotions are disadvantageous. If there are any claims about the disadvantage of intense emotion that can be supported by the empirical data, they will have to be much more specific.

However, there is reason to doubt that disadvantage ought to be connected specifically to the intensity of an emotion given the evidence that suggests disadvantage is sometimes connected to other factors such as gender, race, or preference for feeling the emotion. If ineffectiveness were

147 Tamir, M., Schwartz, S., Oishi, S., and Kim, M. (2017). The Secret to Happiness: Feeling Good or Feeling Right? In Journal of Experimental Psychology. 146: 10, 1448 –1459

148 Lewis, K, (2000). When leaders display emotion: how followers respond to negative emotional expression of male and female leaders. In Journal of Organizational Behavior. 21, 221-234

149 Salerno, J. Peter-Hagene, L. and Jay, A. (2019). Women and African Americans are less influential when they express anger during group decision making. In Group Processes & Intergroup Relations. 22(1), 57–79

150 Yip, J. and Schweinsberg, M. (2017). Infuriating Impasses: Angry Expressions Increase Exiting Behavior in Negotiations. In Social Psychological and Personality Science. 8(6), 706-714

63 somehow inherent to intense anger, we would expect to see intense anger decrease effectiveness in everyone, but it seems to do the opposite for white men. At the very least, the claim “intense anger is counterproductive for women and people of color” is a narrower one than “intense emotion is counterproductive.” But it is plausible that this disadvantage is less about the intensity of anger than it is about the perceived appropriateness of a person with a given identity expressing anger. This brings us to one final complication: most studies do not distinguish between apt and inapt emotion.151 It is plausible that disadvantage is more likely to accompany inapt emotion.

What the philosophical literature says Next, consider some of the ways emotion is argued to be valuable in the philosophical literature. Audre Lorde argues that anger is “loaded with information and energy.”152 Goldie

(despite his worries) agrees that emotions are an important source of information and motivation.153 Little argues that certain emotional responses are a crucial part of understanding certain moral concepts.154 Srinivasan argues that apt emotion is valuable insofar as it is a way of appreciating the world for what it is,155 and Troy Jollimore makes a similar argument about

151 Houben, M. Van Der Boortgate, W. and Kuppens, P. (2015). The Relation Between Short-Term Emotion Dynamics and Psychological Well-Being: A Meta-Analysis. In Psychological Bulletin. 141: 4, 901–930

152 Lorde A. (2007). The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism. In: Sister Outsider: Essays & Speeches by Audre Lorde, Berkeley: Crossing Press, 127

153 Goldie, op. cit.

154 Little, op. cit.

155 Srinivasan, op. cit.

64 grief.156 Grief is thought to be a way of caring or valuing.157 Resentment and gratitude are often thought to be important moral emotions.158 Anger, and even contempt, have been defended as an important part of maintaining self-respect.159

These arguments are about why certain types of emotion are valuable, not about how intensity affects their value. But it seems plausible that, at least sometimes, the value of an emotional response is not impeded by its intensity but rather hinges upon it. If apt emotion is valuable because it is a way of appreciating the world for what it is, high-intensity may be an essential element to grasping that a situation is very horrifying, a person’s actions incredibly gracious, an impending danger not just injurious but life-threatening. If a person has been seriously disrespected it may call for not just a little anger but a lot. If someone dies who is an extremely significant figure in one’s life, not just a bit of sorrow but intense grief may be necessary to process that loss.

Further, the disadvantage of intense emotions often seems connected to the way they are presumed to overwhelm. But an emotion may sometimes be of value because of the space it takes up; the way it demands attention or action. For one who prefers to avoid confrontation, anger can provide the push to speak up, and might make it difficult to set grievances to the side until something has been done. Even when no action is taken, the rumination provoked by

156 Jollimore, T. (2004). Meaningless Happiness and Meaningful Suffering. In: Southern Journal of Philosophy. 42, 333–347

157 Moller, D. (2007). Love and Death. In The Journal of Philosophy. 104, 301–316

158 Strawson, Peter (2003). “Freedom and Resentment” in Gary Watson (ed.) Free Will (pg. 93). Oxford University Press.

159 Bell, Macalester (2005). A woman's scorn: Toward a feminist defense of contempt as a moral emotion. Hypatia 20 (4):80-93.

65 intense emotion can provide insight that might have been lost were the feelings more easily ignored. An intense emotion may also be valuable for its own sake. We should neither presume that intensity is harmful or distorting nor overlook the ways in which the value of an emotion is due to its intensity.

Apt Disadvantage But what about when intense emotion is distorting, or counterproductive, or morally worrisome? In pointing out that the intense emotion can have value and that its disadvantages are often merely assumed, I certainly don’t mean to suggest that all intense emotion will be advantageous or free from harm. Even when intense emotion is apt, it can be counterproductive to one’s aims, morally worrisome, or bad for one’s well-being. For example, D’Arms and

Jacobson offer the example of a bereaved parent. Intense grief is a fitting response to the loss of one’s spouse, yet if one has children to bring up there may be moral reasons not to indulge in grief to the extent that would be fitting. Deep sadness and despair, despite being apt, may risk causing harm to the children or neglecting one’s parental obligations.160 Similarly, Srinivasan grants the claim that anger is sometimes counterproductive: it may in fact make enemies of would-be allies or undermine an agent’s well-being. Suppose we grant Ben Ze’ev’s claim that intense emotions are harmful and that highly emotional people are subject to distorted perception, or Haidt’s claim that various kinds of emotional experience make people worse-off, less resilient, and less likely to succeed in their aims. What follows?

Srinivasan’s arguments about apt, counterproductive anger (summarized in Chapter 1) apply equally well here: nothing automatically follows from the fact that an emotion is immoral,

160 D’Arms and Jacobson, op. cit., 77

66 counterproductive, or bad for well-being. An emotion that is both apt and disadvantageous constitutes a genuine normative conflict: it is a conflict between appreciating the world as it is and moral or prudential aims. Any claims about what a person ought to feel (or avoid feeling) in cases of conflict are in need of additional argument that justifies prioritizing one value over the other. It is a mistake to assume that one disadvantage is a dispositive reason not to feel a given emotion. The conclusion that an intense emotion ought to be avoided or downregulated because it is counterproductive or morally risky misses a step.

Conclusion I have argued that it is a mistake to conflate high-intensity with excess, and that we also have reason to doubt the claim that intense emotions are usually excessive. I have offered reasons to resist the assumption that intense emotion is typically disadvantageous, and argued that even when apt intense emotion is disadvantageous, we need an additional argument before concluding that we ought not to feel it. If I am right, the proper threshold of intensity for appropriate emotion is likely higher than it is often presumed to be.

I want to conclude with a suggestion. Ben Ze’ev speculated that the emotionally intelligent person would be moderately emotional. The idea seemed to be that moderate emotional intensity would strike the right balance of feeling enough to be able to identify and understand the emotion while avoiding such high intensity that one could no longer properly regulate emotion. My suggestion, in contrast to this view, is that at least one way of being emotionally intelligent involves high emotional intensity.

I find it plausible that one capacity that demonstrates emotional intelligence is having the ability to be with intense emotion. By this I mean someone who is able to experience an emotion at a very high level of intensity without attempting to avoid or downregulate. Whereas Ben Ze’ev

(and much of the emotion regulation literature) implies that skill is demonstrated by the ability to avoid harmful or counterproductive behavior, I think we ought to recognize the skill of fully experiencing emotion. By analogy, person who is able to sit through having a tooth pulled, awake and unmedicated, seems to have a large capacity to tolerate pain. Having one’s jaw numbed, being anesthetized, or taking very strong pain medication are all good ways to deal with having a tooth pulled, but a person who uses these methods to deal with having a tooth pulled does not demonstrate a large capacity for pain. They simply use effective methods of avoiding or diminishing the experience of pain. Similarly, having the capacity to fully experience intense emotions is not about skillfully employing methods that bring intensity down to a tolerable level but being able to sit with an emotion in its full intensity, however overwhelming, vulnerable, or painful it may be.

There is little discussion of the ways one might channel intense emotion without

(intentionally) decreasing intensity. For example, one might go for a run, write furiously in a journal, meditate, or rant to a friend not to calm intense emotion but to fully experience it.

Playing a certain type of music can facilitate wallowing in heartbreak or swelling with pride. A group overcome with laughter at some joke may repeat the punchline or make silly gestures to extend the laughter and overwhelming amusement. A person could lean into giddy excitement by jumping up and down, pumping her fist, or shrieking. These are all examples of ways to manage or experience an overwhelmingly intense emotion without the goal of deescalating it. Although some of these types of behaviors are common in discussion of emotion regulation, they are often framed as ways to deescalate emotion, or as constructive activities to stay safely occupied until the emotion passes. For example, confronting intense emotion through mindful meditation is often suggested as a valuable practice because, paradoxically it is “by turning towards negative

68 emotions that we find relief from them.”161 Ranting or journaling might be similarly perceived as a means to get rid of an emotion or calm it down. Running is described by some as a healthy distraction.162 Though I acknowledge that distraction and de-escalation are important emotion regulation skills when they are actively chosen, so too is being with an emotion.

161 O’Brien, M. HOW TO USE MINDFULNESS TO WORK WITH NEGATIVE EMOTIONS. MrsMindfulness.com. Accessed January 7, 2019 at: https://mrsmindfulness.com/mindfulness-for-negative-emotions/

162 Margolis, C. (2015). Running Saved My Life. The Guardian. Accessed January 8, 2019 at: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/aug/24/running-saved-my-life-depression-doctors-pills-therapy-did- nothing

CHAPTER 3: MISJUDGMENTS OF EMOTIONAL RESPONSES TO OPPRESSION

Introduction In this chapter, I identify three common kinds of evaluations of emotional responses to oppression and argue that they are mistaken. In Chapter 4, I argue that these mistakes are due, in part, to anti-emotion bias—perhaps another piece of the problematic legacy I identify in the first chapter.

Each of the three misjudgments involves an evaluation of the emotion as somehow inappropriate. First, I discuss judgments that an emotion is entirely inapt: such as when an angry person is perceived to have no reason to be mad or someone in despair appears to have reason for hope. Then, I discuss judgements that an emotion is misplaced. That is, the emotion is recognized as appropriate to the situation but the response is perceived to be directed at the wrong object. For example, the judgment that though a person’s anger would be justified at the colleague who has insulted her, directing the anger at her boss (for failing to address the insult with the offender) misses the mark. Finally, I discuss emotional responses that are judged to be too intense. In these cases, the evaluator acknowledges the emotion to be fitting and directed at the appropriate object, but judges the intensity of the response to be incommensurate with the actual significance of the event or action which caused it, or objectionable because of the bad effects associated with the intensity of the emotion.

Each of these judgments is common, and many will find it plausible that they are accurate.

The emotional responses in question appear, to many, to undermine kindness or civility; to find fault with those who are not to blame; or to blow inconsequential incidents wildly out of proportion. My task in this chapter is to describe and analyze examples of the kinds of actions and events that yield the emotional response and subsequent judgment, and to argue that the judgments are, in fact, mistaken.163

Mistaken judgments of inaptness The first pattern of misjudgment I will identify is the judgment that an emotional response is entirely inapt. In these cases, a person’s emotional response is perceived to be completely unwarranted by the situation. I will begin by analyzing an example in detail, addressing common justifications for this judgment and bringing out features of oppression that reveal it to be a misjudgment. Then I will explain how this analysis generalizes to a wide range of similar cases.

An Example Consider an example: A man and woman approach a building and are approximately the same distance from the entrance when the man steps ahead and opens the door for the woman. She walks through to a second set of doors which she holds open for the man. Rather than walking through the second set of doors, the man reaches out to hold the second door, gesturing for the

163 I will often use some variation of anger as an illustration because anger is a paradigmatic emotional response to injustice, and also because people may be most hesitant to accept it as justified since it so often demands change or reveals a judgment of wrongdoing. However, the first example I analyze is about irritation. Irritation and frustration are not synonymous with anger, but they have similarities (such as being associated with a demand/desire for change and being perceived as hostile or uncooperative when expressed toward another person), and may be associated with or mistaken for anger. Additionally, there may be other emotional responses that are similarly misevaluated, such as grief or despair. One example (which I discuss later in this chapter) is the upset many people experienced after the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. Others judged this response to be immature, ridiculous, and divisive. To the latter group, grieving the political loss of a favored candidate (or grief at one’s political opponent taking office) was inappropriate and amounted to being a poor sport. Misjudgments of grief (or other emotions) may have the same effect as the misjudgments of anger I discuss here insofar as the erroneous judgment sets the boundaries of appropriate emotion too narrowly and obscures the existence and mechanisms of oppression. I further discuss how misjudgments and anti-emotion bias interact with oppression in Chapters 4 and 5.

woman to walk through. She does so, visibly annoyed. He is bewildered at why she would be annoyed by what he takes to be polite behavior. The (mis)judgment in question here is the man’s assessment of the woman’s irritation. He is bewildered: he thought he was being polite but she expressed irritation rather than gratitude. He sees nothing irritating about his behavior and so judges that her response is inappropriate.

This example might be mistaken for the custom of opening the door for another person

(any other person), which is often perceived as a simple kindness or part of etiquette and thus not the fitting object of irritation or anger. If it were such a case, it seems this man demonstrates civility or goodwill, at worst it seems a morally neutral, completely unremarkable behavior, and either way most would judge that no irritation is warranted. But the example is not an instance of merely “opening doors for other people.” The man’s refusal to walk through the second set of doors when the woman attempts to hold it open for him shows that he was not engaged in the practice of people holding doors open for each other but in the gendered practice of men holding doors open for women—if it were simply common courtesy, he ought to have been happy to have the favor returned.

This is an important difference, and explains why the woman’s irritation is justified.

Holding open the door sends the message that women require special treatment or assistance because they are women. When holding the door open is an instance of the gendered practice, as our example is, it is sexist and insulting.

How the practice is sexist Some object that this practice is not based upon insulting assumptions—for example that women are incapable of opening doors—and if one does not engage in the practice because of assumptions about women’s weakness then it is ridiculous to call it sexist. But we only need to notice that oppression is systematic to see that this does not show the practice to be 72 unoppressive. It matters less whether it is intended to reinforce ideas about women’s inferiority than whether it is in fact part of a system that subordinates and constrains women. And it is: men opening doors for women or helping them into and out of cars, men always being the ones to kill the spiders or run to fetch the car when it is raining, and so many other ways of treating women more gently than men are practices that, taken together, subtly suggest that women are more fragile or less capable than men. Men paying for women’s meals is a part of this pattern too.

Perhaps today this seems preposterous—if anything an injustice for men! But it is quickly revealed to be part of the same pattern: men have had the vast majority of both public and private economic control and women have for the most part been materially dependent on them.164 For example, our mothers and grandmothers were often prevented from establishing credit on their own, constraining economic control in their private lives.165 The U.S. House of Representatives

Budget Committee had never been chaired by a woman until 2017, just one example reflective of the lack of public economic control afforded to women.166 There is and has always been a gendered gap in both wages and wealth.167 Despite huge improvements in women’s economic independence, all kinds of practices, patterns, and policies keep women financially worse-off

164 Toossi, Mitra. (2002). A century of change: The U.S. labor force, 1950-2050. Monthly Labor Review. 125. 15- 28. 10.2307/41845363

165 Eveleth, R. (2014, January 08). Forty Years Ago, Women Had a Hard Time Getting Credit Cards. Retrieved from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/forty-years-ago-women-had-a-hard-time-getting-credit-cards- 180949289/

166 House Budget Committee (n.d.). About: History. Retrieved November 13, 2018 from: https://budget.house.gov/about/history/

167Farrell, D., and Persichilli Keogh, K. (2017, May 15). The gender wage gap gets a lot of attention, but another metric is even more disconcerting. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/jpmorgan-on-gender-wealth- gap-2017-5

73 than men. Heterosexual couples are still more likely to prioritize a man’s career.168 Wages drop when more women enter a field.169 Practices based on the idea that it is appropriate (or even necessary) for women to be dependent on men are part of the system of sexism. The assumption that men and women are naturally different and so ought to be treated differently forms the foundation of this system. Practices that reinforce gender difference support the system of gender hierarchy even when they do not obviously mark women as inferior. Opening doors for women but not men is one small way that treating women differently from men becomes normalized.

Special consideration Still, many believe that this practice is a way of showing some special kind of consideration of or respect for women. Some who hold this belief point to the man’s good intentions: he does not open the door as a result of an assumption that the woman is incapable or weak, rather he is motivated by his intent to be polite or gentlemanly. He intends to do something nice for her or to express virtue. Others insist that treating women in some special way does not require making demeaning assumptions or stereotyping, claiming that the practice is not about providing assistance but showing respect. Or it might seem like getting special favors is being treated especially well, and thus could not be an instance of sexism.

First, note that it is not always objectionable to give certain people “special consideration” based on their gender. Cisgender women and trans people are disadvantaged in certain ways because of their gender and ignoring this fact will only perpetuate the problem.

There are many ways people marginalized based on gender may deserve special consideration in

168 Wong, J. (2017). Competing Desires: How Young Adult Couples Negotiate Moving for Career Opportunities. Gender & Society. 31:2. Pages 171-196. DOI: 10.1177/0891243217695520

169 Levanon, A., England, P., Allison, P. (2009). Occupational Feminization and Pay: Assessing Causal Dynamics Using 1950–2000 U.S. Census Data. Social Forces, 88:2, Pages 865–891, https://doi.org/10.1353/sof.0.0264

74 light of patterns of disadvantage and exploitation, and many ways treatment that is merely equitable appears to be “special” because of those unjust patterns. For example, paying special attention to how to recruit and retain women in a male-dominated field may be justified by the present disparity and historical exclusion. Inviting transgender researchers to speak on a panel about trans issues because they are trans is sensible given their personal experience. Being especially cautious about forming judgments that reinforce gendered stereotypes could be a wise way to counteract unconscious tendencies to confirm stereotypes.170 But opening doors for women does not respond to a gendered need as these actions do: it does nothing to improve conditions for women and is not a response to some existing disparity, it is simply patronizing.

Symbolic shows of “helpfulness” toward women such as holding the door open are useless, and the many kinds of assistance women could actually use from men makes the diligence with which some men open doors especially exasperating.171 Irritation at the man is warranted not only because the practice is sexist, but because it is typically taken by those who engage in it to be a special show of how one values women. Not only engaging in sexist behavior but perceiving it as a desirable or admirable way to act makes a bit of irritation appropriate.

It may seem unfair to bring up other needs when the subject at hand is opening doors.

After all, people can only do so much. But the point here is not that the door-holding custom is wrong because there are other better things one could be doing. It is already part of an oppressive system. Bringing up the many other more pressing needs is meant to acknowledge that there are appropriate times to consider gender in how we interact with others and show that door-opening

170 Bijlstra, Gijsbert & Holland, Rob & Dotsch, Ron & Hugenberg, Kurt & Wigboldus, Daniel. (2014). Stereotype Associations and Emotion Recognition. Personality & social psychology bulletin. 40. 10.1177/0146167213520458.

171 This point is made by Frye in Frye, Marilyn (1983). “Sexism” in The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory. The Crossing Press. 6

75 is not one of them. It also explains more about what makes this situation irritating to the woman: that her gender is picked out and deemed worthy of special treatment for some showy sexist practice but not when it actually puts her at a disadvantage just adds insult to injury.

As Marilyn Frye points out, men do not merely perform this act when it is convenient but

“impose themselves awkwardly and jostle everyone” to make it happen.172 There are several things to note here. First, that it is common for the practice to be imposed awkwardly and inconveniently again marks the distinction between the practice of opening doors as a courtesy to others and the custom of men opening doors for women. I have already pointed out this difference, but it bears repeating because so many who defend the practice of men opening doors for women cite reasons that only support the custom of opening doors for people as a convenience, or seem to hop back and forth between defending one practice and then the other.

Much of the indignation that arises around criticism of the gendered practice seems to really stem from the impression that it is being suggested that one never ought to open the door for anyone else. There is nothing courteous about cutting in front of someone just to open the door for them, and going out of one’s way to do this for women in particular is no special honor. Even in cases in which there is no particular inconvenience as a result of the practice, the point remains that at best, gender is being recognized and made salient for no good reason. At worst, there are infantilizing and harmful assumptions undergirding the practice.

Intention Still, some may think that whatever the practice’s connection to oppression, the woman’s irritation is not fitting if the man has good intentions. If he was just trying to be gentlemanly or

172 Frye, ibid, 6

76 do what he has been brought up to believe is right and simply does not understand how that plays into sexism, many will judge that the woman’s irritation is not warranted. But she is not irritated because she perceives ill-will or lack of good will in his motivations; she is responding to his participation in a sexist practice. His good intentions cannot change the fact that this practice is part of the system of sexism. Oppression is particularly insidious because it is so worked into our institutions and cultural practices that much of it is maintained without any particular intention.

Much of the way oppression operates is through acceptance of apparently well-meaning actions, practices, policies, and beliefs that end up reinforcing subordination. It is irritating (to say the least) that oppression is threaded through our culture in such a way, that a man can think he is being polite while actually reproducing symbols of oppression. One need not realize or understand how their intended actions are in fact oppressive for them to be so.173

Insignificance Another possible response is to think that this incident is so insignificant that the irritation is unwarranted. Some might think that even if it is sexist it is too inconsequential to merit any kind of response. Although good intentions cannot undo or make up for serious harm, it might seem silly to concern oneself with actions that are neither seriously harmful nor maliciously- intended.

But irritation does not imply large significance. Irritation is a fitting reaction to an inconvenience or a nuisance.174 It is not that the woman mistakes the incident for something

173 This also constitutes part of the explanation for why emotion directed at the man (as opposed to the system of gender oppression) is justified, but I will address this issue in the next section.

174 Additionally, it is worth considering whether those who hold this view would also find a small expression of appreciation unwarranted (since they perceive the incident to be so insignificant). I doubt this is the case. Though finding appreciation appropriate to an insignificant attempt at kindness is not necessarily inconsistent with finding irritation unwarranted by an insignificant instance of sexism, the asymmetry is suggestive about the way we value 77 especially harmful. It is irritating because he refuses her kindness (and in doing so reveals that his act was this gendered custom rather than general courtesy), it is irritating because he creates an awkward situation, it is irritating because he reminds her of the subordinate status she occupies. These are relatively small things but constitute at least minor annoyances and thus are sufficient to make irritation appropriate.175

Variation in response Finally, notice that there is more than one appropriate response to this situation, and plenty of responses, appropriate or not, which are common. It is plausible that a situation like this would be met with appreciation or no emotional reaction at all, even by someone who is aware that it is sexist. This seems typical of minor annoyances. Whether and to what extent a traffic jam, scratchy clothing tag, excitable dog, crying child, or rude colleague is experienced as irritating varies considerably from person to person. Even a single person may experience something as irritating on some occasions but not others. It is not necessary to settle on a single appropriate response, only to notice that irritation is one justified reaction.

There are multiple standards by which an emotional response can be evaluated. For example, it might be admirable for a person not to be irritated in a situation that warrants it, or simply prudent to overlook annoyances supplied by those with whom one must get along.

Further, there are multiple aspects to any situation which are candidates for emotional response.

While the woman in our example responds to some of the irritating features of the situation, she might have also responded to his good intentions, perhaps with gratitude at his goodwill or pity

emotion. It also might suggest that this particular objection to the woman’s irritation is the result of prejudice rather than a considered view on how significant an event ought to be to warrant irritation.

175 There may be additional justified emotional responses to larger patterns or the system as a whole, but those would not show her response to the man to be unjustified. I discuss this further in the next section.

78 at his lack of understanding. She might have felt a bit of irritation, gratitude, and pity all at the same time. This is not inconsistent with our characterization of the example so far, though perhaps it appears to be. In particular, I previously claimed that the man’s good intentions have no bearing on the fittingness of the woman’s irritation. That remains the case. His intentions do not change or necessarily override the features of the situation that make his action irritating, they simply make other responses fitting as well.

Generalizing the analysis Examples like this—seemingly small things which many judge not to warrant any negative emotional response at all—are pervasive. I use the term “microaggression” to identify this category of relatively subtle or minor instruments and symbols of oppression. Public discussion of microaggressions provides evidence that many people do judge emotional responses to them to be totally inapt.176 A few common examples include asking an Asian-

American colleague where she is from (and then where she is “really” from), naming a sports team after Native American peoples (or worse—derogatory slang for such groups), or making a

Halloween costume or party themes out of racialized groups. But again, a closer look reveals that irritated or even angry responses to these things are warranted. All of the examples listed are part of oppressive systems. Asking a person where she is “really” from after her initial answer that she was born ‘here’ or that she is from Michigan is a refusal to include her as a normal participant in our culture. It categorizes her, based on race, as deviant. A social group would not be intelligible as a costume if it were not something that is by definition “other.” Further, these

176 For example: Friedersdorf, C. (2015). “The New Intolerance of Student Activism” The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/the-new-intolerance-of-student-activism-at-yale/414810/; Marcus, R. (2015). “College is not for coddling” The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/college-is-not-for-coddling/2015/11/10/6def5706-87db-11e5-be39- 0034bb576eee_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.7c723fb8ecab

79 mascots and costumes often directly reinforce harmful stereotypes such as a group being primitive, animal, or criminal or represent them in more subtle ways as ridiculous and inferior.

Much of the discussion around microaggressions looks similar to the door-holding example. The claim that anger or irritation is inappropriate is defended on the basis of the good intentions of the person who asks “Where are you really from?” or harmlessness of a costume, revealing an impoverished concept of what constitutes an appropriate object of emotion.177 They are denied to be instances of racism based on similarly impoverished concepts of what constitutes oppression, bias, or prejudice. As with the door-holding example, a closer look demonstrates that these examples are part of the hugely damaging system of racial oppression.

Whether these practices are directly harmful or not, they reinforce a devastatingly harmful system and do so quite apart from what anybody intends by them.178 And sometimes, they are just plain annoying.

Misjudgments of Misplacement The second pattern of mistaken judgment involves emotional responses recognized to be warranted by the situation but perceived to be directed at the wrong object. I refer to these evaluations as judgments that an emotional response is misplaced. I focus on anger and related emotions because, as I will argue here, they tend to be perceived as misplaced due to their association with blame and punishment.

177 I say more about objects of emotion in the next section as well as in Chapter 5

178 We should note, however, that individual instances of microaggressions range from rather subtle to quite obvious mockeries or objectification of the target social group, which may shed light on whether it is truly possible or plausible that a participant is well-intentioned. If good intentions are unlikely there may be additional reasons for emotions such as anger or disgust.

Objects of Emotional Response to Systemic Problems In one kind of case in which anger is judged to be misplaced, systemic injustice within a culture is recognized to warrant anger, but anger directed at individuals is judged to be inappropriate given how widespread or deeply ingrained a belief or practice is. For example, when someone upset by the racism in Gone with the Wind or a sexist remark made by a grandparent is brushed off with the excuse that the objectionable attitudes are “just a product of their time.”179 These kinds of examples are not limited to aging texts and generations. The door- holding man from the earlier example may be young and nevertheless attempt to excuse the offense with the claim “it’s how I was raised.” The systemic racism or sexism that engenders this ignorance or behavior is acknowledged to warrant anger: the responses offered are excuses rather than arguments that there is no reason to object to the behavior. But when directed at the individual the anger is judged to be misplaced. Such responses imply that there is no reason to be upset at the individual because the insult or wrongdoing results from a systemic problem rather than an individual moral failing. Often, the individual is presumed to be ignorant of how their actions are problematic. This ignorance is explained by the action being accepted or encouraged within the system, or by other aspects of a system or culture that render what is objectionable about the action invisible.

A second kind of case involves individuals perceived to be excused not because of ignorance, but because of how they are influenced or constrained by unjust systems. Imagine

Elle is met with anger upon using the wrong pronouns for Jo. Jo uses “they/them” pronouns and

179 Nelson, A. (2013). Let’s Talk About Racism in the Classics. Book Riot. Retrieved from: https://bookriot.com/2013/10/18/lets-talk-racism-classics/; Berlatsky, N. (2014). The 'Product of Its Time' Defense: No Excuse for Sexism and Racism. The Atlantic. Retrieved from: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/01/the-product-of-its-time-defense-no-excuse-for-sexism- and-racism/283352/

81 although aware of this, Elle accidentally uses the pronouns “she” and “her” while introducing Jo to a room full of people. Elle, like most in our culture, tends to automatically refer to others in the third-person with the pronouns “she” or “he.” Elle thinks it is understandable for this widespread practice to make Jo angry. She understands that enforcement of a gender binary is harmful in many ways to trans and nonbinary folks, and forms the foundation for sexist oppression. She wishes the habit were not so entrenched, but still feels that she personally does not deserve Jo’s anger.

Emerging from these examples is an assumed connection between hostile emotional responses (such as anger) and blame. Aspects in each of these examples complicate the issue of whether the object of emotion is blameworthy. Ignorance, external constraint, the lack of direct involvement or lack of ability to do otherwise seem to excuse the objects of emotion or render their actions permissible. These challenges to the aptness of blame also appear to be challenges to the aptness of anger.

The Blame Game: Apt Objects of Emotion To understand why judging anger directed at Elle or the author of Gone With the Wind as misplaced is a mistake, we need to understand the connection between blame and anger.

Emotions like anger are often a response to wrongdoing. Seneca defines anger as the “burning desire to avenge a wrong.”180 According to Aristotle, the appropriate object of anger is a person who has done something that constitutes “the unjustifiable contempt of one’s person or friends.”181 Notice that these definitions involve wrongdoing, not merely harm. This means that

180 Seneca, De Ira, In Solomon, R. (Ed.) What is an Emotion? Page 13

181 Aristotle, Rhetoric 1378 a20-1380a4, In Solomon, R. (Ed.) What is an Emotion? Page 6

(according to these definitions) the appropriate objects of anger are blameworthy individuals.

What it means to blame someone is commonly understood to involve emotions like anger and resentment. R. Jay Wallace claims that “…connection to the reactive sentiments is the key to understanding the special quality of blame.”182 Susan Wolf argues that “angry attitudes” are central to at least one kind of blame.183 Expressions of anger are commonly perceived as blaming: a response to an expression of anger with information thought to excuse or exculpate

(e.g. “It’s not his fault; he’s just a product of his time”) shows that the expression of anger is perceived to be an instance of (inappropriate) blame.

The views of both Jonathan Haidt and Martha Nussbaum—discussed in Chapter 1—are two examples of views that not only associate anger with blame, but argue that anger always has to do with blame. Martha Nussbaum argues that anger always contains the belief that one has been wronged along with the desire to avenge that wrong.184 Haidt argues that anger is appropriate only when a person intends to express hostility or do harm.185 When people respond angrily to unintentional insult or injury, they mistakenly perceive the offender as blameworthy.

Both blame and anger, according to Haidt, are only apt where there is intended harm or insult.

The connection to blame can help explain why anger gets misjudged in two different ways. First, I take up the possibility that these judgments are mistaken because the object of emotion is wrongly perceived to be blameless. Perhaps Margaret Mitchell is culpable for

182 Wallace, R. J. (2011). Dispassionate Opprobrium. In Reasons and Recognition, ed. R. Wallace, R. Kumar & S. Freeman. New York: Oxford University Press, 359

183 Wolf, S. (2011). Blame, Italian Style. In Reasons and Recognition, ed. R. Wallace, R. Kumar & S. Freeman. New York: Oxford University Press, 337

184 Nussbaum, M. (2015). Transitional Anger. The Journal of the American Philosophical Association. 1:1, 42

185 Haidt (2018), op. cit., 40

83 whatever ignorance might explain the racism in Gone with the Wind or Elle did not put sufficient effort into getting Jo’s pronouns right. Second, I challenge the assumption that blameworthiness is always necessary for a person to be the appropriate target of anger, and argue that anger is sometimes misjudged because of an incorrect assumption that one must be blameworthy to be the apt object of anger.

I use the language of blame, but it is a complex subject and I have no commitments to a particular conception of it. In what follows, I only hope to make the argument that anger may be appropriate even in the presence of the kinds of things sometimes thought to shield a person from blame (such as ignorance). Additionally, I argue that the kind of things blame is sometimes thought to imply (such that that one deserves punishment or ought not to have done whatever they are to blame for), are not always implied by anger. But my argument for why anger may be appropriate in the misjudged cases should not be affected by details of any particular conception of blame, except for perhaps the complaint that I use the wrong word to make my argument.

Blameless? On its face, it seems plausible that being a “product of one’s culture” excuses one’s ignorance or participation in oppressive practices that are widely accepted. For Haidt, the simple fact that a person is ignorant means they are not to blame, since blame is only appropriate in response to harmful or insulting intentions (not harm or insult that results from ignorance). But even those who do not think ignorance in general is exculpatory may find it tempting to believe when ignorance of some kind (e.g. that gendered pronouns can be harmful) is the dominant view.

Systemic injustice is spread throughout our cultural practices, and many seem to remain ignorant of this injustice without any special effort. This ignorance may be thought unlike forms of culpable ignorance where the ignorant individual “should have known better,” cases in which the

84 ignorance reveals a carelessness or objectionable lack of concern for others.186 The defense that a person is “a product of her culture” resists the claim that ignorance of oppression reflects these types of flaws. This type of ignorance is thought to reveal nothing more significant about an individual than that she lives in a particular time and place (one that widely assumes false beliefs or is accepting of problematic practices).187 Even once oppressive beliefs and practices are recognized to be part of an unjust system, it may be quite challenging to refrain from participation in old habits (e.g. falling into traditional patterns of gendered pronoun use). Again, this might be thought to reveal nothing more than a bad habit for which one is not to blame

(rather than moral defect or corruption).

Nevertheless, there is often reason to be skeptical of the claim that culture counts as an excuse. First, note that even if ignorance of oppressive practices is common, it is not inevitable.

One can use one’s own moral capacities to determine that an action is wrong, even when that action is socially accepted. Cheshire Calhoun points out that it is reasonable to hold average moral citizens “responsible for applying accepted moral canons (e.g., against exploiting others) to cases not covered, or incorrectly covered, in the social stock of moral knowledge.”188 The fact that cultures change shows that individuals are not entirely and unavoidably a product of

186 Cheshire Calhoun argues that oppression constitutes an abnormal moral context which the claim that a person ought to have known better “doesn’t stick.” Calhoun, C. (1989). Responsibility and Reproach. Ethics. 99:2, 400. Susan Wolf suggests it is possible that people in cultures that are accepting of oppressive practices and beliefs may not be capable of knowing better in Wolf, S. (1987). Sanity and the metaphysics of responsibility. In F. Schoeman (Ed.), Responsibility, character, and the emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

187 This is a plausible interpretation of “deep-self” views of moral responsibility. The concept of “deep-self” views is articulated in Wolf, S. (1987). Sanity and the metaphysics of responsibility. In F. Schoeman (Ed.), Responsibility, character, and the emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Examples of the view: Frankfurt, H. (2003). Freedom of the will and the concept of a person. In G. Watson (Ed.), Free will. New York: Oxford University Press., Watson, G. (2003). Free agency. In G. Watson (Ed.), Free will. New York: Oxford University Press.

188 Calhoun, C., op. cit., 394

85 dominant culture. Every culture that has come to eschew some previously-endorsed practice or belief did so because of individuals who perceived it to be wrong despite widespread or unreflective acceptance.189 And, even when they are few and far between, there exist individuals who depart from what is widely accepted. Moreover, it is a rare person who has no exposure to beliefs and practices that differ from those that are prevalent in their community. Though it can be easy to surround oneself with likeminded people and to exclusively consume media that is in agreement with one’s beliefs, it would be very hard for most people to entirely avoid opposing ideas. So, while it is plausible that many oppressive practices are carried out in ignorance, in most cases there is at least some possibility of avoiding ignorance.

Similarly, it is usually possible to change even deeply-ingrained habits. There are endless examples: learning to say “audiobook” rather than “book on tape” as technology changes, calling your friend Stephanie by her full name after finding out she dislikes the nickname “Steph,” remembering to insert the chip on a credit card into the machine after years of swiping the magnetic strip, and so on. Though it may be difficult, the fact that people unlearn old habits and pick up new ones all the time shows us it is often possible. Refraining from the assumption and use of traditional gender pronouns is no different.

Given that in many cases it is possible to avoid ignorance and change habit, the issue is how much effort moral agents ought to put toward reflecting on their beliefs and practices and unlearning problematic habits. Though I will not make any definite claims about how much we ought to expect, it is reasonable to think that moral agents are obligated to reflect on their beliefs and actions to some extent. Furthermore, we should be realistic about how demanding this

189 This point is made in Moody-Adams, M. (1994). Culture, Responsibility, and Affected Ignorance. Ethics. 104:2, 291-309

86 obligation really is. Consider how common it is for an agent to happen upon an impetus for reflecting on beliefs and practices without trying. For most in our society, there is a cell phone within arm’s reach that could provide historical information, empirical data, first-person accounts, essays, news articles, novels, films, even music that could be illuminating to an analysis of any given practice or belief. Those who do not seek out this information intentionally may chance upon it scrolling through social media or reading the news. One could even encounter new ideas just by watching a sitcom. Books, films, and television shows often prompt people to confront their views on moral and political issues. The Golden Girls, a popular show now over thirty years old, depicted its characters confronting racism, ageism, homophobia, stereotypes about disability, and harmful attitudes about HIV. The point is that being forced to reckon with one’s ignorance does not require taking courses in gender theory or intentionally engaging with counterculture. Exposure to ideas or information that could alert one to gaps in moral knowledge is common and can come about unintentionally, simply by consuming mainstream media or interacting with others in daily life. Failure to take these kinds of opportunities (especially if such failure is habitual) suggests that a person’s ignorance is willful, and therefore less likely to exempt or excuse. It seems reasonable to expect agents to take some level of initiative, especially when their ignorance pertains to common, but inconsistently applied moral principles.

Just as there is often reason to be skeptical that ignorance is exceptionally difficult to overcome, there is often reason to question how tight the constraints of the unjust systems under discussion are. Addressing a person by the name or pronouns they prefer is not a particularly demanding requirement. A person may find it difficult (especially when it requires unlearning well-established habits) but that is not necessarily an excuse.

One’s culture and background (among other things) do largely impact what one accepts as normal and moral, what one notices, and what kinds of ideas one is willing to entertain. What should be obvious can be easy to overlook and what ought to be common practice can require effort. Michelle Moody-Adams points out that wrongdoing is very common, and it is not unusual for otherwise decent people to carry out horrific actions, revealed by many of the actions of average citizens in Nazi Germany.190 Cheshire Calhoun observes that oppression is often invisible, taking the form of “ordinary men, with ordinary characters, living out ordinary lives.”191 But we should be careful not to conclude, based upon how common ignorance is, that it is harder to correct false moral beliefs than it truly is. We should not excuse wrongdoing simply because features of an unjust system put us in difficult situations.

Anger without blame Although blame and anger are closely connected, the notion that anger always implies blame (found in Nussbaum’s and Haidt’s views) employs too narrow a concept of what anger is for and what our emotional lives are like. Though there is a lot of overlap between the conditions that make blame and anger appropriate, anger is sometimes appropriate where blame is not. In other cases, anger may be appropriate where blame is indeterminate, or where blame is simply not a central consideration. Anger, I shall argue, can be appropriate where there has been insult, injury, or wrong and need not constitute punishment or accusation.

Consider Cheshire Calhoun’s explanation of how widespread acceptance of oppressive practices complicates the issue of blame:

190 Moody-Adams, op. cit., 299

191 Calhoun, op. cit., 390

“Sensitive to the social determinants of oppression, women often feel grateful when husbands volunteer to babysit or when administrators show minimal support for their feminist research interests. The driving force behind such misplaced feelings of gratitude is the logic of moral language. "X is obligatory" means, "Unless there are exceptional excusing conditions you are blameworthy and reproachable for not doing X." And "X is supererogatory" means, "You are not blameworthy and reproachable for failing to do X and deserve special praise for doing X." Unfortunately, this logic breaks down in abnormal contexts where individuals are routinely rather than exceptionally exempted from blameworthiness, and hence reproach, for failing to do the obligatory. No wonder, then, that women have trouble sustaining their sense of what is owed them and find themselves feeling grateful when given their due. The logic of moral language dooms any attempt to sustain or convey the obligatoriness of X while simultaneously excusing most failures to do X. Thus, in abnormal contexts, we face a choice: either we can convey the obligatoriness of X via moral reproach or we can excuse, by withholding reproach, those who deserve to be excused; but not both.”192 Calhoun connects reproach with blame, claiming that the “abnormal context” of oppression leads to a problematic situation in which it routinely makes sense to withhold reproach. Given that moral ignorance in these cases is typical, rather than the result of defect or corruption, it does not seem fair to blame. But routinely exempting people from participating in oppressive practices makes it challenging to maintain an accurate sense of moral obligation. As Calhoun points out, when failures to treat oppressed people as they ought to be treated are routinely excused from reproach, it is difficult to retain the sense that such treatment is truly requirement. Jo, understanding that people are not used to using they/them pronouns and that many may not understand the problem with gendered pronouns in the first place, may lose the sense that they are entitled to be addressed as they like, and of how gendered pronouns connect to broader patterns of oppression.

One possible way to resolve this dilemma is to accept that anger is appropriate (without committing to the claim that blame is appropriate). People are not to blame for the systems they are born into and brought up in. When oppressive systems are widespread and widely accepted,

192 Calhoun, op. cit., 403-404

89 it may be difficult to determine the extent to which they are to blame for actions that perpetuate those systems. Nevertheless, people like Elle are implicated in injustice, bound to reproduce harmful systems unless they make an effort to change. Anger captures the fact that there is something wrong with their actions. It allows us to retain an accurate sense of the harm and injustice perpetuated by participation in oppressive systems, even if that harm is unintentional and excusable.

Consider another example, in which blame is even less central. In the tenth season of

Grey’s Anatomy, tension builds between Meredith and Cristina, who had once been quite close.

They are both still ambitious surgeons as they were when they first met, but Meredith has married and had children—a life neither of them would have chosen when they first became friends and choices in which Cristina still has no interest. Each expresses anger in the following argument, which occurs across two scenes.

Meredith: I can compete as a mother and as a surgeon. You just don't think I can compete against you. Cristina: You can't, because, Mer, this is all I do. This is all I want to do. So don't whine to me because you made a decision you regret now. Meredith: You think I regret my family?! Cristina: I think you feel left behind. And that sucks for you, but no one forced you out of the game. Meredith: I am not out of the game! I just won't sabotage my friends to win it! Cristina: Oh. Oh, is that what I do? Meredith: That's what sharks do. You called it our first day. Cristina: Well, as I recall, I was talking about you. Meredith: How long have you been sleeping with Shane? He blushes at an exposed ankle. He saw you in your underwear and didn't bat an eye. Cristina: That is none of your business! Meredith: You don't have to justify it to me. He's just hooking up with the best teacher to make sure he can get everything he can. It's what you did all through med school and all through intern year. Congratulations. You've become the thing you worshipped. Cristina: And you became the thing we laughed at.

Later

Cristina: How dare you say I haven’t changed. Meredith: I don't have to justify my choices to you, not one. Cristina: How dare you say I am the same person I was when I got here, before I knew Burke and Owen and you. Your life looks different because it's filled with houses and husbands and kids. And mine looks the same, but I'm not. I've changed. I'm doing this alone. And that's, that's just as hard as what you're doing. But I thought I would at least have you. Meredith: I'm so jealous of you, I wanna set things on fire. You did what I tried to do, and I couldn't. And you don't even know how you did it. You have nothing but time and focus. You're not who we were when we got here. You are who we both set out to be. Cristina: And you've become something we never saw coming. You are as good a mother as you are a surgeon. And I'm happy for you. But we are growing apart. Meredith: I know. And I don't wanna compete with you, but I do, because we're supposed to push each other and make each other better forever. Since the day we met, right? Cristina: Right.193

This is an example of apt anger that does not clearly involve moral blame or wrongdoing.

There has been a kind of injury to the friendship. Meredith and Cristina have grown apart and both experience the change as painful. But growing apart—even investing less in a friendship than one once did—is not obviously a moral wrong. Neither is it an accident. Meredith is not blameworthy for her choice to get married or have children. Cristina is not blameworthy for having no interest in marriage or motherhood. Nevertheless, the life each has chosen makes it difficult to connect as they once did. Anger reflects the fact that both Meredith and Cristina have agency in the situation. They are both responsible for decisions and actions that contributed to their drifting apart. Perhaps more importantly, each still has the capacity to do something about it. They are not simply two people mourning a lost friendship or disappointed by a new, less satisfying way of interacting. Anger of this kind can be empowering, highlighting the potential each of them has to do something about their fading friendship. The tendency anger sometimes has to prompt confrontation can also spark change (for better or worse).

193 Rhimes, S. (Writer) & Phelen, T. (Director). (December 12, 2013). Get Up, Stand Up [Television Series Episode]. In Grey’s Anatomy. Shondaland.

The model of blame does not capture the complicated process in which the two friends are engaged. We might imagine that in a straightforward case of blame, Person A wrongs Person

B, who becomes angry with Person A for the wrongdoing for which Person A is to blame.

Suppose we describe part of the situation like this: Meredith’s claim that Shane is only sleeping with Cristina to advance his career is insulting. Cristina gets angry with Meredith for insulting her. Meredith is blameworthy for the insult. But this is not a full picture of the exchange. The status of Meredith’s comment as an insult is ambiguous. Neither has hang-ups about approaching sex in a casual or transactional manner. Later, Meredith admits that she is jealous, confirming that the comment was as much about her frustrated, envious admiration of the success that makes

Cristina someone interns would be wise to cozy up to as any contempt for her sexual behavior. It is not even straightforward that Meredith’s comment is wrong because she intends for it to be insulting. From the beginning, their friendship has been sharp at least as often as it is sweet: after a conflict in the very first episode Cristina asks: “We don't have to do that thing where l say something and then you say something, and then somebody cries, and there's a moment?” to which Meredith replies: “Yuck.”194 The kinds of liberties they might take with one another as friends and even what counts as an insult is in flux. Is Meredith the kind of person who would look down on Cristina for sleeping with an intern now that she is a wife and mother? Does

Cristina think Meredith is a joke and an inferior surgeon, given that she appears to have become the kind of person they both used to laugh at? Is Cristina’s sex life Meredith’s business? (It certainly used to be). Does Meredith have to justify her choices to Cristina? (They definitely used to have the kind of relationship in which each would seek the approval and understanding

194 Rhimes, S. (Writer) & Horton, P. (Director). (March 27, 2005). A Hard Day’s Night [Television Series Episode]. In Grey’s Anatomy. Shondaland.

92 of the other). They work out new boundaries with each other as the contours of their relationship shift. It is not obvious what counts as blameworthy at this time in their friendship.

The two aspects that help make sense of apt anger the case of friendship—the existence of insult or injury and the existence of individual agency—helps explain why anger at the individual (not just the system of oppression) may be fitting in oppressive contexts even if blame is not. An oppressive “system” is not an abstract construct, separate from individuals. Policies and laws are created by individuals. Individuals can participate in or refrain from oppressive practices. Attempts to shield from anger those who are “just a product of their culture” obscures that reality that oppression is largely effected and perpetuated by individual actions and practices. Anger is an important way of acknowledging the agency individuals have. Anger reflects the role Meredith and Cristina’s past actions have played in the decay of their friendship as well as the possibility that they can do something to make a change going forward. Similarly, anger at individuals whose actions perpetuate oppression is a reflection of the fact that those actions play a part in reproducing or reinforcing oppression, as well as the possibility that those individuals can change things.

Consider Elle using the wrong pronouns for Jo. There are cultural and institutional practices that contribute to her error. She grew up learning that “she” and “he” constitute a comprehensive list of singular pronouns and that pronouns (and genders) can be assumed based on certain aspects of physical appearance. This was likely absorbed passively in a variety of ways, from strangers commenting “She’s adorable!” after glancing into a stroller to the fact that using gendered pronouns is common but asking which pronouns ought to be used is not. This practice was likely reinforced more formally by teachers and grammar handbooks instructing that it is incorrect to use the pronoun “they” for an individual. These practices help explain Elle’s

93 error and why the habit it led to may be difficult to unlearn. Perhaps they even excuse her from blame. But Elle’s habit of assuming pronouns is not a separate result of other oppressive cultural practices—it is one of these oppressive practices. Her actions reinforce acceptance of the gender binary (even if she ought to be excused or exempt from blame). And, her actions are a locus of potential change. Not only is it possible for her to stop conforming to traditional patterns of pronoun attribution without broader cultural change, individual nonconformance is likely what will bring about broader changes (such as changes in grammar handbooks). This point is not meant to rest on Jo’s anger toward Elle actually bringing about change. Change can be a positive result of expressing anger, but I am less concerned with a practical justification for anger than with how individual agency makes anger fitting. Even if Jo’s anger does nothing to bring about change, it is still the case that Elle participates in oppressive practices which could not exist but for the participation of people like her. Whether or not it is excusable, one way of registering that the action is both wrong and Elle’s doing is the propensity to feel angry at Elle when it happens.

One reason there may be resistance to accepting anger in the absence of blameworthiness is because anger is associated with, or even itself perceived as, punishment. Martha Nussbaum argues that punishment (or payback) is conceptually a part of anger: “…anger involves, conceptually, a wish for things to go badly, somehow, for the offender in a way that is envisaged, somehow, however vaguely, as a payback for the offense.”195 Thich Nhat Hanh observes that sometimes the expression of anger itself is punitive: “Whenever the energy of anger comes up, we often want to express it to punish the person whom we believe to be the source of our

195 Nussbaum, op. cit., 46

94 suffering.”196 If anger does include a payback wish or itself counts as punishment, it makes sense to insist that anger must only be directed at those who deserve blame. But not every instance of anger includes notions of revenge, and it is not quite right to conceive of every expression of anger as a punishment. Many expressions of anger are focused on demanding change or enforcing boundaries, as we saw with Meredith and Cristina working out what their friendship might become. It is not uncommon for expressions of contrition to be met with a response something like: “Don’t apologize, just do better.” If punishment or revenge were the aim rather than change, we might expect the angry individual to feel satisfied when a person wallows in shame or embarrassment. But this is not in alignment with many real-life situations like that of

Elle and Jo. In fact, many people who routinely have their pronouns mistaken stress their desire that others move on from accidents quickly.197 Though it is possible this desire is merely a wish for the offender to move on quickly in public but for anger to induce private suffering as punishment, it is clear that change is the priority for many. If punishment were central we would expect the conversation to focus more heavily on feeling remorse than on moving on and doing better next time.

Misjudgments about intensity The last pattern of mistaken judgment involves emotional responses criticized on the basis of their intensity. Sometimes this is a criticism of the emotion’s relative intensity: the ‘size’

196 Hanh, T. (2001). Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames. New York: Riverhead Books, 54

197 King-Miller, L. (2018). Ask a Queer Chick: How Do I Stop Accidentally Misgendering My Co-Worker? Rewire News. https://rewire.news/article/2018/08/24/ask-a-queer-chick-how-do-i-stop-accidentally-misgendering-my-co- worker/; Ellenthal, L. (2016). 6 Quick And Easy Ways To Stop Misgendering Trans People. In The Odyssey Online. https://www.theodysseyonline.com/quick-easy-ways-stop-misgendering-trans-people; (2014). How to React After Accidentally Misgendering Someone. In The Q Center. http://www.pdxqcenter.org/how-to-react-after-accidentally- misgendering-someone/

95 of the emotion is ‘too big’ compared with the actual significance of the event it responds to. It is an overreaction. This criticism can apply to rather mild emotions as long as they are perceived to be a more intense response than the situation is thought to warrant. Additionally, very intense emotions are sometimes subject to criticism on the basis of problems thought to be inherent to intense emotion (even when they are proportionate). For example, some worry that intense emotion distorts proper perception or judgment, or that it causes people to act foolishly. I will focus on these three (overlapping) critiques: that intense emotion is an overreaction, that it is distorting, and that it constitutes or causes objectionable behavior.

Examples Consider some examples.

Post-election grief: Anna Greenwood spent the day after the 2016 U.S. presidential election curled up into the fetal position. “I was supposed to have lectures,” she recalls. “But I couldn’t bear to be around other people. I was so devastated, I couldn’t stop crying.” Her response was characterized by some as “dramatic,” “extreme,” and “oversensitive.” Some judged her to be overreacting, suggesting it is perhaps due to her lack of perspective given that she has not lived through any ‘real’ global crises. One woman expressed impatience with people like Anna “making everything about them,” stating: “I wish people knew how to pick their battles.”198 Post-election outrage: A couple days after the election, Michelle posts on her Facebook page, linking to some critical comments Donald Trump previously made about the electoral college, commenting: “Hey Trump supporters, even your president thinks its bullshit that he got elected.” Brian comments on the post: “What value is there in such angry retrospection? It seems pointless to dwell on the election no matter if your side won or not. It isn’t personal. In my mind it is time to move on—getting so intense about it isn’t going to win you any friends or votes for next time.”199 All three critiques can be identified in these examples. Anna’s response is perceived to be an overreaction that would be fitting for a ‘real global crisis’ or great personal loss but not a

198 Adapted from: Redfern, C. (2017). 'I COULDN'T STOP CRYING WHEN TRUMP WON' Generation Snowflake… hysterical cry babies or millennial activists society needs right now? We find out. In The Sun. https://www.thesun.co.uk/living/3224797/truth-generation-snowflake-hysterical-cry-babies-millennial-activists/

199 Adapted from a post and comment on a friend’s Facebook page

96 disappointing election. Her intense emotion appears to distort her perception, since she is apparently taking the event to be personally devastating when it is neither that big a deal nor about her in any particularly significant way. To be so deeply affected seems to reveal distorted judgment: overwhelmed by emotion, Anna interprets the election results as a devastating loss while Michelle seems to find them a personal affront. Brian’s language suggests the loss of an election would more appropriately be perceived as similar to one’s favored sports team losing a game. Finally, the responses are criticized for their effect on behavior. Anna’s grief impedes her ability to function: she cannot bear to be around other people and misses class. Her response is perceived as self-absorbed, in addition to dysfunctional. Michelle’s angry expression is perceived to be pointless and divisive. She appears to be doing nothing but stewing and stirring up trouble.

Why these responses are not overreactions One reason Anna and Michelle are thought to be overreacting is because they appear to overestimate the impact or importance the election results will have in their lives. The

(mis)judgments may result from the assumption that the loss of a favored candidate is a small disappointment and is unlikely to affect an individual’s life all that much. If election results are indeed relatively inconsequential, intense reactions seem like childish preference (“I wanted my candidate to win!”) or ridiculous pride (“I can’t believe the Democrats lost—how can I drive my car to work with that Hillary bumper sticker now?”) Alternatively, perhaps it appears that they overestimate their own significance. Perhaps they appear to feel entitled to their desired outcome or unable to apprehend the broader picture in which there exist many people with interests that differ from their own. Perhaps Michelle appears to be taking each and every vote for Trump as a personal insult.

But electoral politics are not an abstract game, though they are often discussed as such.

Election results have real-life consequences. The first 100 days Trump was in office saw a more than thirty percent increase in arrests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.200 Trump has already appointed two new Supreme Court justices and it is possible that he could have the opportunity to nominate a third. Anna and Michelle may have had their lives turned upside-down watching a loved one be deported (or fearing deportation themselves). Their ability to marry, be protected from workplace discrimination, remain registered to vote, or access an abortion are just a handful of ways they could be impacted by Supreme Court decisions (which is largely impacted by who sits on the court). So, it is possible that the election results had a very significant personal impact, and reasonable for people to expect this could be the case.

Additionally, though it is unlikely that anyone cast their ballot with the intention of insulting Michelle in particular, it is not unreasonable to infer certain upsetting values and attitudes from the election results. It is hard to deny the disrespect Trump displayed for women and immigrants (among others), both before and during the campaign. Some argue that this disrespect was just for show—a political strategy rather than genuine reflection of values—or that they voted for Trump in spite of these reasons (not because of them). Nevertheless, a person finding this behavior tolerable enough to cast their vote for Trump reveals something about their values and priorities. In particular, the importance of respecting women and immigrants is revealed to be a low priority. The election results reveal that these priorities are, perhaps, more widely shared than Anna and Michelle had realized. Confronting this fact may justifiably be experienced as a loss (of trust in others) or an insult.

200 Department of Homeland Security (2017). ICE ERO Immigration Arrests Climb Nearly 40%. https://www.ice.gov/features/100-days

Distorted perception It may seem to some that intense emotion causes Anna and Michelle to “blow things out of proportion.” That is: they experience intense emotion and then conclude, from such an intense emotional experience, that things must be really bad. I addressed in the previous section why they may not be overreacting. But there are other kinds of distortion some worry intense emotion will cause. Even if their response is commensurate with the significance of the event, there may be concern that other perceptions or judgments formed in the intensely emotional state will be distorted. For example, some may worry that Michelle’s outrage will influence her perception if she grades the paper of a Trump-supporting student, making the paper’s flaws seem worse than they are and the virtues less apparent. Or, perhaps Anna’s despair will bleed into other, unrelated judgments; the destabilizing sense of a huge loss subconsciously impacting her assessment of which retirement plan is best.

I discuss this kind of critique in greater depth in Chapter 2, so I will only briefly revisit my response to it here. First, we should be sure not to assume that intense emotion is distorting.

Suppose the paper Michelle grades and the retirement options Anna reviews would appear differently in a milder emotional state. This does not yet show that the evaluation made in the intensely emotional state is less accurate. Different features of a situation may be more or less salient in different emotional states. We need an argument for why one is more accurate than the other, not an assumption. Perhaps Michelle tends to overlook serious flaws in student papers when she grades in a happy state and there is actually better justification for the way she evaluates papers while outraged. If it does turn out to be true that perception is distorted by an intense emotion in some particular case, we should make sure not to make more of this fact than

99 is warranted. That an emotion influences perception in some objectionable way does not show that emotion to be ill-fitting.

Bad action Finally, these emotional responses are criticized based upon their perceived relation to objectionable actions. Anna misses class. Michelle is accused of being unable to move on, alienating people she could be persuading of her opinions, and perhaps thought to undermine her own well-being by allowing her anger to simmer. Again, we should be careful to observe the proper scope of these criticisms. That an emotional experience is counterproductive to some particular aim, or contributes to dysfunction or wrongdoing is not automatically a reason to conclude it would be better not to feel it. An emotion that is objectionable on one of these grounds may nevertheless be fitting or conducive to achieving some other aim. For example, grief tends to interrupt our usual activities. Yet it is often a healthy, necessary process in response to loss. If Anna’s grief is fitting, it may not be surprising or particularly concerning that she is temporarily unable to deal with fulfilling her usual obligations.

Turning to Michelle, I will once more point out that even her anger could still be apt even if these criticisms turn out to be well-founded. So, we should expect an additional argument for why winning allies or prioritizing well-being should take precedence over feeling fitting emotion.201 Further, it is not obvious that Michelle’s anger ought to be blamed for the alleged divisiveness of her angry expression. Suppose it is true that her anger alienates those who would otherwise be political allies, or those who would at least be open to working productively “across the aisle.” Why should she be responsible for facilitating cooperation by tempering her anger,

201 Amia Srinivasan provides an in-depth discussion of and argument for this point in: Srinivasan, A. (2018). The Aptness of Anger. In: The Journal of Political Philosophy. 26:2. 123-144

100 rather than these would-be allies by learning how to work with an angry person?

Uncooperativeness, irrationality, and pettiness are often associated with anger, but they are not inherent to it. In the absence of some additional argument, there is no reason to think a cooperative angry person ought to bear the responsibility for a lack of unity or productive collaboration. (I make this argument more fully in Chapter 4).

Additionally, it is not obvious that anger undermines Michelle’s well-being. Her anger may flow from or help maintain characteristics that are necessary for well-being, such as self- respect or caring deeply about some cause. The reasons anger is assumed to undermine well- being may simply be false: for example, that anger precludes her enjoyment of life or her ability to feel gratitude. If anger does undermine well-being in these ways, what is objectionable is not any particular instance of anger so much as a pattern of emotion.

Conclusion I have argued that three common evaluations of emotional responses to oppression—that they are inapt, misplaced, or too-intense—are frequently mistaken. These mistakes have in common that they are too critical of emotional response. In the next Chapter, I turn to arguing that these mistakes are the result of anti-emotion bias, as well as exploring the interaction between anti-emotion bias and oppression.

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CHAPTER 4: ANTI-EMOTION BIAS Introduction

In this chapter, I argue that the mistaken judgments identified in the previous section— that an emotional response is inapt, misplaced, or too intense—are at least in part the result of anti-emotion bias. One might think that those mistakes result only from ignorance about oppression or from some other kind of prejudice. In the following discussion I show how anti- emotion bias does contribute to these mistakes. Though it may not be the only factor, identifying its influence is important to forming more accurate assessments of emotion and working to undermine oppression.

I identify anti-emotion bias in two main ways: unjustified assumptions and prejudiced language. We might think these are signs of prejudice: when a person makes unjustified assumptions or uses language in a particular way it shows that they have prejudiced beliefs or attitudes. What is most important for my purposes is that whatever a person’s explicit beliefs or attitudes, these assumptions and ways of using language result in unfair negative evaluations of emotional response.

I will focus my discussion on an example. Several years ago, the outrage of some Yale students became the object of extensive criticism after footage of a confrontation between the students and a faculty member went viral. Leading up to this confrontation, Yale’s Intercultural

Affairs Committee sent an email encouraging students to be mindful of whether their choice of

Halloween costume might be racist or appropriative. Erika and Nicholas Christakis, heads of

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Silliman college, sent an email to all Silliman students suggesting the IAC email was unnecessary, inappropriate, and infantilizing. Some students found the Christakises’ email as

103

well as their response to backlash from the email dismissive of student concern about racism on campus. A timeline of events, both emails, the students’ open letter to Erika Christakis, and a partial transcript of the interchange between Nicholas Christakis and the students can be found in

Appendix 1. Although I focus on a single example, much of the analysis has broader relevance

(for example, to the kinds of examples discussed in Chapter 3). It is difficult to accurately evaluate judgments of emotional response without significant attention to context. And, this case is particularly useful because there was so much explicit evaluation of emotion in public discussion, as well as explicit connections made to arguments about emotion in the academic world.

First, I review some responses to the student outrage. I also offer some analysis of oppressive costumes and the Christakises’s actions to show why it is plausible that outrage was appropriate. Then, I argue that bias can be identified in the unjustified assumption that outrage is a barrier to productive discussion. After that, I argue that emotionally-loaded language is dismissive, and that this dismissiveness is the result of how certain terms imply or make salient prejudiced and stereotyped ideas about emotion. Finally, I consider the connections between oppression and anti-emotion bias. While my arguments about language and unjustified assumptions make it plausible that anti-emotion bias contributes to misjudgment (and the general devaluation of emotion), it interacts with other factors. Oppressed groups that are stereotyped as emotional in certain ways are impacted the most by anti-emotion bias. This helps to explain some of the nuances of anti-emotion bias. It also shows that the solutions I suggest in Chapter 5 are not only a possible fix for certain issues within philosophy of emotion, they may have an important role in anti-oppression projects as well.

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The Example: What happens at Yale does not stay there Criticism of Student Outrage The students’ outrage received all kinds of criticism. Ruth Marcus advises students to

“…grow up. Learn some manners. Develop some sense of judgment and proportion.” It characterizes their response as a tantrum and condemns outrage on the basis that it forecloses the possibility of “reasoned interchange.”202

Conor Friedersdorf implies their outrage is inapt, characterizing their response as

“overreacting,” “making mountains out of molehills,” and asking in disbelief “they can’t bear this setting that millions of people would risk their lives to inhabit because one woman wrote an email that hurt their feelings?” before going on to claim that “either they need help from mental- health professionals or they’ve been grievously ill-served by debilitating ideological notions they’ve acquired about what ought to cause them pain.” He suggests that even if broader patterns of racism warrant outrage it is a mistake for the students to direct their response to the

Christakises: “That isn’t to dismiss all complaints by Yale students. If contested claims that black students were turned away from a party due to their skin color are true, for example, that is outrageous…Some Yalies are defending their broken activist culture by seizing on more defensible reasons for being upset…But regardless of other controversies at Yale, its students owe Nicholas and Erika Christakis an apology.” He also criticizes outrage based on the claim that insisting it be “validated” makes civil disagreement impossible, as well as being

202 Marcus, R. (2015). “College is not for coddling” The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/college-is-not-for-coddling/2015/11/10/6def5706-87db-11e5-be39- 0034bb576eee_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.7c723fb8ecab

105 counterproductive to the students’ own aims (“In their muddled ideology, the Yale activists had to destroy the safe space to save it.”)203

In an article referenced by Marcus, Friedersdorf, and the Christakises in reply to student response, Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff criticize emotional responses like the Yale students’ outrage more generally, observing: “Surely people make subtle or thinly veiled racist or sexist remarks on college campuses, and it is right for students to raise questions and initiate discussions about such cases. But the increased focus on microaggressions coupled with the endorsement of emotional reasoning is a formula for a constant state of outrage, even toward well-meaning speakers trying to engage in genuine discussion.” 204 The reference to “well- intentioned” speakers suggests this kind of response is misplaced: that outrage is inappropriate unless there is malicious intent. This statement also implies that outrage undermines well-being, an idea they later return to, asking: “What are we doing to our students if we encourage them to develop extra-thin skin in the years just before they leave the cocoon of adult protection and enter the workforce? Would they not be better prepared to flourish if we taught them to question their own emotional reactions, and to give people the benefit of the doubt?” It appears that outrage is perceived to be counterproductive to success in the workplace as well as to undermine flourishing in a broad sense. Haidt and Lukianoff later confirm this when they expand the article into a book (discussed in Chapter 1), arguing that the students would be healthier, stronger, and better able to achieve their goals in part by tamping down emotion.

203 Friedersdorf, C. (2015). “The New Intolerance of Student Activism” The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/the-new-intolerance-of-student-activism-at-yale/414810/

204 Haidt., J and Lukianoff, G (2015). “The Coddling of the American Mind” The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/.

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What’s wrong with oppressive costumes? Certain kinds of costumes—such as those constructed from stereotypes of oppressed communities or that trivialize the trauma of oppression—can be located within the broad category of microaggressions. That is, they are seemingly insignificant symbols or instruments of oppression that are of more consequence than they may initially appear, especially understood as just one of countless instances of insult and injustice within an oppressive system. Costumes, specifically, are morally problematic in at least two (overlapping) ways. First, they play a role in maintaining oppressive systems. These costumes degrade and mock members of oppressed communities, trivialize centuries of horrific injustice, and perpetuate harmful stereotypes. For example, the costume for a “ghetto chick” from Compton, described in the invitation to an event held in 2010 by UCSD students named “Compton Cookout,” included “short, nappy hair,”

“cheap weave, usually in bad colors,” and “very limited vocabulary.”205 Instances of another costume showed up on multiple college campuses in 2014: some students dressed as Customs and Border Patrol Officers and the others were “Mexican.” The latter costume was composed of a fake moustache, sombrero, sarape, and handcuffs.206 Oppression is almost always justified by the false claims that the oppressed are inferior to privileged groups, and that their inferiority or disadvantage is natural. Costumes can play a role in reinforcing and normalizing those claims.207

The “ghetto chick from Compton” reinforces stereotypes of impoverished Black women and

205 Screengrab of Original "Compton Cookout" event (+ another similarly themed event). (2010, February 19). Retrieved from https://stopracismucsd.wordpress.com/2010/02/19/screengrab-of-original-compton-cookout-event- another-similarly-themed-event/

206 Jones, A. (14, October 31). A Child's Treasury of This Year's Most Offensive Halloween Costumes. Retrieved from http://gawker.com/a-childs-treasury-of-this-years-most-offensive-hallowee-1652874318

207 I offer an in-depth explanation of how claims of inferiority get normalized in Chapter 3 pertaining to the door- holding example. Much of that discussion can be applied to understanding how something like a Halloween costume plays a role in an oppressive system. I also discuss stereotyping in the section of this chapter titled “Oppressed Populations and Anti-Emotion Bias”.

107 mocks their presumed taste in cheap accessories and lack of formal mainstream education. The fact that racial oppression may explain why an individual’s vocabulary largely comprises what is considered “nonstandard” English, or that some communities are discriminated against on the basis of dialect is obscured. Women who fit this stereotype are made to seem ridiculous. These costumes help facilitate ignorance of injustices such as race- and income-based inequity in education and the lack of recognition of the legitimacy of dialects outside “standard” English. By characterizing these traits as personal flaws and worthy of derision, these costumes reinforce the lie that low-income people of color are the cause of their own misfortunes (including those

“misfortunes” which are actually the result of histories of oppression) and thus that they are less intelligent.208 Second, these costumes alienate and exclude students who belong to oppressed groups. Consider the concept of a costume. One cannot “dress up” as oneself. To be intelligible as a costume, the identity one pretends to be is by definition “other,” or else it is not pretend. The kinds of costumes in question are often worn in connection to themed parties on college campuses (discussed further later on). Parties with themes such as “Compton Cookout” or

“Colonial Bros and Nava-Hos” presume there will be no actual “ghetto chicks” or indigenous women at the party. Furthermore, someone who actually hails from Compton could show up, but will still only count as being in costume if they are dressed as the stereotype.

Costumes exist on a spectrum. The examples I have mentioned perpetuate stereotypes, trivialize trauma, and maintain the “otherness” of oppressed identities in obvious ways. Other kinds of costumes may be more subtly objectionable, or it may be unclear whether they are objectionable at all. I discuss this briefly below in the section titled “Offense as subjective.” For

208 If this seems a dramatic accusation for a single costume, remember this is just one of countless ways stereotypes are perpetuated and oppressed identities are demeaned. The claim is not that the costumes have a sizeable impact on their own, but that they are part of a much larger system.

108 my purposes, it is enough that the kinds of extreme examples I have described are both common and problematic in ways that justify taking offense.

What’s wrong with the Christakises behavior? Erika Christakis’s email characterizes the IAC email as an exertion of “implied control” by the university that suggests students are fragile and incapable of tolerating offense or working out differences. She lumps together all costumes that are outside the wearer’s cultural background, resisting meaningful distinctions between, for example, her white daughter wanting to dress as Mulan and those that utilize blackface, stating that where we ought to draw the line seems an “unanswerable question” and claiming that no particular standard for Halloween costumes is more defensible than another. She encourages students faced with offensive costumes to heed her husband’s advice to “look away or tell them that you are offended.” In reply to student complaints, the Christakises defend their original statements, point students to the article “The Coddling of the American Mind” (implying the student protests are requests to be coddled or perhaps that complying with their requests would amount to coddling), resist apologizing, and refuse to admit any wrongdoing or insensitivity.

I turn now to identifying anti-emotion bias in these criticisms. I argue that this bias can be found in the lack of evidence provided for critical claims, in trivializing and dismissive language used by critics, and in the lack of nuance employed in evaluations of outrage. As before, though this chapter focuses on one example I think the discussion applies more broadly to a pattern of similar judgments of emotional responses to oppression.

Bias and the Barrier Assumption One reason to believe that the mistaken judgments are the result of prejudice is because they are often based upon assumption or stereotype. Negative beliefs about certain emotional

109 responses are taken to be obvious, sometimes assumed to be true despite evidence to the contrary. Specifically, certain emotions such as anger and outrage are taken to be barriers to cooperation, rational engagement, civility, or other aims. This collection of assumptions—which

I call the barrier assumption—is often used to justify claims that an emotional response is somehow bad or undesirable. But simply referring to the “fact” that anger tends to get in the way of cooperation does not justify the claim that anger is inappropriate. That this is frequently assumed without offering evidence of or argumentation for its truth reveals bias. To be clear: I am not arguing that anger never functions as this kind of barrier. But because it does not always do so, it ought not to be assumed that anger functions as a barrier unless there is good reason to believe that it does.

There are various ways outrage is thought to act as a barrier. Emotions are thought to distort perception and judgment. The outraged person might judge their own concerns to be much more important than they actually are, they might interpret an accidental slight as intentional, or read a neutral expression as contemptuous. The critics sometimes make claims about outrage preventing reasonable or rational engagement. Often this seems to be a call for objectivity. Outrage may be thought to be a barrier because it precludes objectivity. The outraged individual may have difficulty perceiving things clearly, and so unable to come to agreement with their interlocutor on relevant facts. Or, the outraged individual may be unable to see things from any perspective but their own, which again could make agreement hard to come by.

Another way outrage is thought a barrier is by making the outraged individual uncooperative.

The outraged individual may be thought unwilling to compromise, unwilling to listen, spiteful, or uncharitable. They might be prone to yelling about unrelated issues or launching irrelevant

110 personal insults rather than working toward a solution. I turn now to identifying instances of the barrier assumption in the Yale example.

Marcus states that “the possibility of reasoned interchange is foreclosed when a tempered communication is greeted by vitriol and outrage.”209 Friedersdorf asserts that “In their view, one respects students by validating their subjective feelings. Notice [this] position allows no room for civil disagreement” and concludes that the students became bullies who “had to destroy the safe space to save it.”210 Haidt’s view characterizes emotion as a barrier to accurate perception of reality, claiming that “critical thinking requires grounding one’s beliefs in evidence rather than in emotion or desire” and thus concludes that people would be best off “talking [themselves] down from the idea that each…emotional response represents something true or important.” He also portrays emotion as a barrier to dialogue and well-being, asking: “Would [students] not be better prepared to flourish if we taught them to question their own emotional reactions, and to give people the benefit of the doubt?”211

Critics take the existence of unresolved conflict and emotionally-charged confrontations as evidence that outrage was a barrier to rational engagement or conflict resolution. It seems clear, however, that this is an unjustified assumption. The students were perfectly able to engage in rational dialogue and to make genuine and substantive attempts at conflict resolution— evidence that their outrage did not act as a barrier by making them uncooperative or

209 Marcus, R. (2015). “College is not for coddling” The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/college-is-not-for-coddling/2015/11/10/6def5706-87db-11e5-be39- 0034bb576eee_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.7c723fb8ecab

210 Friedersdorf, C. (2015). “The New Intolerance of Student Activism” The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/the-new-intolerance-of-student-activism-at-yale/414810/

211 Haidt., J and Lukianoff, G (2015). “The Coddling of the American Mind” The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/.

111 unreasonable. Here are some examples of their attempts at cooperative and rational engagement: they drafted an open letter explaining their complaints. They attempted to have a dialogue with

Christakis and explain their reasons for being upset. They appealed to content they had learned in a class Christakis himself taught to explain why they felt wronged—a detail that is significant because it demonstrates awareness of what may best help him understand their perspective. They provided analogies and clarified their points when Christakis misunderstood. It seems clear that all of these things are examples of reasoned interchange, being cooperative, resolving conflict.

Even during one of the most intense moments, when a student yells at Christakis and tells him he is disgusting, the student is making a substantive point. She articulates what she understands the role of Head of College to be, claims Christakis has failed by that standard, and makes some harsh evaluations of his character. The authors assume that her outburst is irrational because it is intensely emotional. Friedersdorf contrasts this moment with reports that the student is typically “kind, level-headed, and rational” and characterizes it as bullying and a hateful personal attack. Marcus calls it a tantrum. The student is certainly not being kind to Christakis and perhaps what she says even constitutes a hateful personal attack, but these characterizations are nevertheless misleading. She is not irrational, as Friedersdorf implies, simply because she is not gentle or mild-mannered. Even being wrong in her assessment of Christakis or his role would not on its own show her to be irrational—merely mistaken. Calling it a tantrum obscures the relevance of her point and distracts from the fact that she is making a point at all. Describing the student’s words as a hateful personal attack implies she changes the subject by criticizing

Christakis. But it is not as if she mocked his appearance or inadequacy as a scholar—her attacks were on what she perceived to be failure in the role of Head of College. The emails and subsequent actions the students found upsetting were performed in this role. Whether or not her

112 assessments are correct, it is certainly relevant to bring up this role and his performance in it, and it is possible for someone to fail in professional leadership roles in ways that are disgusting, outrageous, and shameful.

A comparison to the critics’ interpretation of Christakis’s behavior is illustrative. He, too, makes what could arguably be interpreted as a personal attack, calling it “interesting” and

“amazing” that, despite taking classes and having had other interactions with him, the student has not “formed an opinion of [him] as a human being” and realized that his beliefs are largely in agreement with her own. One might think he is calling her obstinate, immature, or irrational for what he perceives to be an unwillingness or inability to see that he is a good person with similar beliefs values. Even if that seems to be a stretch, Christakis is clearly directing the conversation away from the student’s claim that she found the email to be dismissive and evidence that he is not listening, focusing instead on her inability or unwillingness to understand him. Later, a different student makes explicit that she is not judging him to be a bad person or assuming he holds racist beliefs—she simply wants acknowledgment that the email was disrespectful. In response, he references “hurt feelings,” which the students protest is not accurate. He insists

“Tell me the term you want me to use and I’ll use it,” which might be interpreted as dismissive; as though he is more interested in placating the students than understanding their perspective or engaging with the substance of their comments. In any case, he declines to use their suggestions of “expressions of racism” or “an affront to a group of people.” He also frequently interrupts, changes the subject, and refuses to respond to certain complaints, sometimes twisting the students’ words.

The students are blamed for the failures in communication and conflict resolution, accused of intolerance, bullying, and having tantrums. Their sustained engagement with

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Christakis is painted as entitled harassment. After quoting a student claiming she wanted to talk about her pain, Friedersdorf observes that she was free to do so and continues: “Some felt entitled to something more, and that is what prolonged the debate—not a faculty member who’d rather have been anywhere else.” Compare this to Friedersdorf’s report that Christakis “listened and gave restrained, civil responses,” his assessment of Christakis as magnanimous, the fact that he cites Christakis’s invitation to students to continue the conversation over brunch as additional evidence of civility and magnanimity. Why is Christakis praised for his continued engagement with the students while they are censured for theirs? Their accusations of intolerance suggest the critics perceive the students to be belaboring trivial points or insisting upon complete agreement.

Friedersdorf wonders “Who taught them that it is righteous to pillory faculty for failing to validate their feelings, as if disagreement is tantamount to disrespect?” Marcus claims they are behaving like infants and characterizes the entire exchange as students childishly demanding an apology. But the details of Christakis’s behavior should make clear that the students have reason to believe they are not being understood or taken seriously. They believe they have been disrespected not because the Christakises disagree with them but because they feel they are being ignored, dismissed, or perhaps willfully misinterpreted. The prolonged confrontation is not simply about demanding agreement or an apology—though either might serve as evidence that they have finally been heard and taken seriously—it is about trying to be understood. There is room to interpret the students’ persistent engagement as evidence of their optimism and determination. Christakis at the very least fails to understand or communicate his understanding, and is perhaps obstinate and uncooperative.

I hope to have made two things clear: first, the students did not make it impossible to engage rationally or move toward a resolution. These claims rest on the unjustified assumption

114 that outrage is a barrier, and suggest prejudicial attitudes toward emotion. Their demand to be taken seriously—and for their emotional pain to be taken seriously—was distorted by

Friedersdorf who mistakenly assumes that this requires “validating [any and all] subjective feelings.” Marcus offered no justification for claims that student outrage made reasoned interchange impossible, and nothing that warrants such an assumption is readily available.

Of course, emotion still might have been a barrier even if it was not an insurmountable one. But the second thing I hope to have made clear is how the critics’ disparate treatment of the students and Christakis reveals that even this milder claim is in this case the result of bias.

Criticism focuses largely on tone and emotional state rather than direct barriers to communication such as changing the subject, being dismissive, or misrepresenting, minimizing, or rejecting out of hand the claims of one’s interlocutor. The Christakises are portrayed by critics as thoughtful, civil, deferential, earnest, mild, respectful, measured, and restrained. Christakis is credited with “engaging in earnest dialogue.” The students, on the other hand, are characterized as childish, emotionally-charged, immature, hateful bullies. Their outrage is characterized as a barrier to productive discussion. The possibility that outrage might have facilitated productive conversation is not even considered. Yet it seems likely that outrage is what motivated them to engage in the first place or clarified their perspective (perhaps by commanding their attention or focusing it). Neither is it explained why the outrage is counterproductive. It is simply stated, because it is not based on evidence but assumptions about the nature of outrage.

Barrier Assumption, Take Two There is another way in which anti-emotion bias is involved with the barrier assumption.

So far, the discussion has addressed claims that the outraged students are unable to engage rationally and cooperatively (and argued that these claims are unfounded). I turn now to

115 addressing the claim that outrage is a barrier not for the outraged individual herself, but for those engaging with her.

People sometimes shut down when others become emotionally intense. Feeling threatened or uncomfortable, a person may find they are less able to process information, to respond compassionately or rationally, and may feel compelled to cease engaging in any further dialogue. Imagine a person exclaiming “I can’t talk to you when you’re like this!” or Ben’s complaint to Leslie in an episode of Parks and Recreation: “…sometimes when we disagree, you're so passionate, I feel like I'm arguing with the sun.”212 Rather than functioning as a barrier for the outraged individual (by making her uncooperative or unreasonable), outrage might function as a barrier for those confronted with an outraged interlocutor (perhaps due to anxiety, frustration, or inability to focus in the presence of heightened emotions). The critics might be right that reasoned interchange or civil disagreement are hindered by student outrage, but not because the students were unable to engage rationally and civilly. Rather, they might be right that outrage was a barrier because it caused the Christakises to shut down.

There are, however, several reasons to be dubious of this version of the barrier assumption. First, in this particular case, it simply never comes up that the Christakises’ ability to engage rationally is impeded by outrage. The critics do claim that the students are deeply unfair to Christakis, but it is not because they have rendered him incapable of engaging. On the contrary Christakis is praised for his engagement. It is implausible that this version of the barrier assumption is present here.

212 Scott, A (Director) (January 23, 2014). Farmer’s Market [Television Series Episode]. In Parks and Recreation. NBC

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Still, this assumption is worth further examination because it is common elsewhere. What would it take for the second version of the barrier assumption to be true? Those who tend to shut down in the face of outrage may feel intimidated or uncomfortable but more or less retain their ability to engage in dialogue. Preferring not to engage with intensely emotional people or thinking it unpleasant is not, by itself, a barrier. Finding it more challenging or difficult to engage with outraged people compared with dispassionate or happy ones does not automatically justify characterizing intense emotion as a barrier. Further, if a person tends to shut down in the face of outrage it would be reasonable to conceive of that person’s inability to engage with outraged people as the barrier rather than the presence of the emotion itself. It might also be true that outraged people find it more challenging to engage when they must suppress or downregulate their emotions. These conflicting preferences regarding emotional engagement might be a barrier, but it is not obvious that outrage (rather than the aversion to it) is the problem.

Yet because of ingrained prejudice against emotion it is treated as obvious that outrage is the barrier. It is perceived as legitimate to protest “I can’t talk to you when you’re so emotional” or to claim that outrage makes reasonable discourse impossible. It is sometimes even perceived as especially mature or admirable to walk away from an outraged person rather than argue.

Cultivating the ability to engage with outraged interlocutors rather than shutting down might be desirable so one need not depend on others downregulating emotion in order to participate in dialogue or conflict resolution.213 Additionally, there is often value in experiencing or expressing an emotion. This is lost when emotions are avoided or restrained. For example,

213 This is, of course, not to deny that shutting down may sometimes be an appropriate response to expressions of outrage (or other emotions). There are many important factors that are relevant including power and whether outrage is apt.

117 outrage can contain important information, be a part of maintaining self-respect or emotional well-being, or help give meaning to moral concepts.214

We can grant that some find it unpleasant or difficult to engage with outraged individuals, but it is a mistake to conclude that this as an unavoidable effect of outrage. Plenty of people are able to discuss disagreement, resolve conflict, and find mutual understanding despite one or all parties being intensely emotional, sometimes even because of those emotions.215 If outrage is a barrier to rational engagement or cooperation it is not an inevitable one.

Analysis of Language I now turn to discussing how language used to criticize the Yale students reveals prejudiced attitudes toward emotion and contributes to the critics’ mistaken judgments. For example, characterizations of student response as “discomfort” and “taking offense” subtly suggest that student complaints need not be taken seriously either because they are insignificant, mistaken, or subjective. These terms function in this way largely by activating anti-emotion stereotypes.

214 See Chapter 3 “The Blame Game” for references discussing these claims.

215 Research on conflict and relationship satisfaction and success that compares lesbian, gay, and straight couples supports this claim, as well as suggesting an explanation for why emotions like anger act as barriers when they do. In a long-term observational study, lesbians were found to express more emotion—including anger—during conflict than gay or straight couples and to remain more positive after conflict. Both lesbian and gay couples were found to use fewer “hostile emotional tactics” including domineering and belligerence. The fact that lesbians were angrier but less hostile and more positive seems to support the claim that being angry does not always translate to being uncooperative. Additionally, it was hypothesized that hostile emotional tactics are connected to unfairness and power discrepancies rather than to negative emotions (because in lesbian and gay relationships, fairness and power- sharing was more common but this did not correlate with less physiological affective arousal or emotional expression). So, it may be the case that emotion serves as a barrier only when there are other factors at play, such as unequal power dynamics. Study: Gottman, J., Levenson, R., Swanson, C., Swanson, K., Tyson, R., and Yoshimoto, D. (2003). Observing Gay, Lesbian and Heterosexual Couples' Relationships. In the Journal of Homosexuality, 45:1, 65-91. Discussion: The Gottman Institute (n.d.). Same-Sex Couples, Research Page. Accessed March 21, 2019 at: https://www.gottman.com/about/research/same-sex-couples/.

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How “offense” and “discomfort” center the conversation on emotion

“These students were offended by one person’s words...” -Conor Friedersdorf

“Yale can be an uncomfortable place for minority students.” -Ruth Marcus

“…if you don’t like a costume someone is wearing, look away, or tell them you are offended.” -Erika Christakis

“A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense.” -Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff

Characterizing student response as “taking offense” or connecting it to discomfort centers the conversation on emotion. To assert that someone is offended is to comment on their emotional state: to offend is to “cause to feel upset, annoyed, or resentful; be displeasing to.”216

A person can disagree with another or judge their behavior to be tacky or immoral but they only count as taking offense if they also have a certain kind of emotional response. Critics explicitly associate taking offense with “hurt feelings.” When the critics mention discomfort they are referring to emotional discomfort. A closer examination reveals that not only do these terms involve an emotional component, but can function to trivialize the claims of those portrayed as offended or uncomfortable in part because of prejudiced attitudes toward emotion.

How should we respond to offense, discomfort, and hurt feelings? To understand the trivializing effect these terms can have, it is important to notice various aspects of emotional response. First, the emotional responses targeted by critics—feeling offended, uncomfortable, or having hurt feelings—may or may not be grounded in reality or

216 “Offended.” Google. Accessed November 5th, 2018.

119 justified by good reasons. It would be justified to feel offended when a friend fails to show up for a dinner date and does not call to cancel. It is not justified to remain offended after finding out the friend was hit by a car and knocked unconscious on the way to dinner. Second, these emotional responses may or may not warrant action. The fact that someone takes offense when they are not invited to a wedding does not, by itself, entitle them to an invitation. It might, however, warrant a gently-worded explanation (depending on their relationship to the couple).

And, absent competing values or restrictions, if the couple values not causing offense to their loved ones the fact that leaving a particular cousin off the guest list would cause offense may warrant extending an invitation. Though the possibility of causing offense certainly does not justify passing a law that requires couples to extend invitations to everyone who wants to attend their wedding, the possibility of offense might justify elementary school policies requiring students to bring Valentine’s Day cards to every child in their class if they bring any at all.

Additionally, offense, discomfort, and hurt feelings may respond to events or actions that are significant or inconsequential. Feelings might be hurt by a close friend’s betrayal of trust or by a stranger who swipes left on Tinder (indicating a lack of romantic interest). One can feel uncomfortable when a colleague makes racist remarks as well as when one deliberates about whether to point out the spinach stuck in a colleague’s teeth. Finally, it can be relatively obvious and uncontroversial whether a response is justified, significant, or warrants a particular type of action or it can be difficult to determine. It is clearly justified to take offense at being maliciously called a slur. It may be less obvious whether it is justified to take offense when a loved one who is under great stress lashes out. It might be difficult to determine whether being passed over for a promotion was the result of implicit racial bias, a personal grudge, or simply the legitimate result

120 of a difficult decision between two qualified candidates, and subsequently difficult to determine whether a given response is justified.

I describe this range of examples because it is important to recognize that some instances of feeling offended, uncomfortable, or having hurt feelings are justified responses to some action or event, that these feelings are sometimes responses to quite significant actions or events, and that sometimes certain kinds of actions are appropriate in light of these feelings (apologizing, explaining, avoiding actions that would cause these responses, and so on). As I will explain in the following sections, there is a kind of dismissiveness implied by the language of offense and discomfort that obscures these possibilities, and can be traced to anti-emotion bias. In identifying a response as “taking offense” or “hurt feelings,” critics appear to feel justified in assuming the response is either trivial or unreflective of anything important beyond the emotion itself (to which the emotion is a response). Though it would be a mistake, in many cases, to conclude from the mere fact that an action has caused offense that it is morally objectionable or should be avoided, it is also a mistake to assume that whether or not an action causes offense (or discomfort, or hurt feelings) is entirely unimportant and should never have any bearing on our actions.

Feelings of offense should be taken neither as “an unbeatable trump card” nor as entirely irrelevant; they ought to be taken as a reason to evaluate whether there is anything objectionable about the cause of the offense. It ought not to be automatically assumed that offense is ungrounded, that it is trivial or mistaken, or that modifying one’s behavior in light of offense would be silly or unnecessary. It should at least be considered possible that a feeling could warrant attention or action because of how painful it is. I now turn to identifying these

121 assumptions in the critics use of language and explaining their connection to anti-emotion prejudice.

Emotion as insignificant We typically understand matters of comfort to be relatively trivial. A dentist might say

“This will be a bit uncomfortable but it won’t hurt.” This is meant as a reassurance since we typically assume pain is worse than discomfort. We talk about debilitating pain but debilitating discomfort sounds odd, if not unintelligible. Discomfort is the kind of thing that can be overlooked in favor of other considerations, not the kind of thing that debilitates. A slightly different distinction might be made between pain and discomfort. Pain is often understood to signal a problem; that one is injured or is about to be injured. Discomfort, on the other hand, might be understood to have no such connection to there being something wrong. Though it can be quite intense or unpleasant, it is less significant than pain in the sense that it need not signal a problem to be attended to. A claim that someone or something is uncomfortable often implies that the comparatively minor issue of comfort is the only thing at stake. It would be strange to talk about discomfort while experiencing serious pain. Marcus’s claim that “Yale can be an uncomfortable place for minority students” is misleading because it suggests that discomfort is the worst of what minority students experience at Yale. The example she goes on to provide—a fraternity allegedly stating that their party was for ‘white girls only’ and turning away Black and

Latina students—would be more apt had she characterized Yale as hostile or discriminatory rather than uncomfortable.

The language of offense, like the language of discomfort, is associated with insignificance. To offend is to “cause to feel upset, annoyed, or resentful; be displeasing to.” But of course, one can be displeased by many things including those of little importance. Violations

122 of etiquette, such as taking offense at swear words is one example. Steve Hughes provides another example in a stand-up routine in which he claims to be offended when he sees boy bands, Richard Dawkins yet another when he offers chewing gum and backwards baseball caps as examples of things he finds personally offensive.217

Like discomfort, offense is often understood to be insignificant in the sense that it does not necessarily signal a problem. Many believe we need not take offense seriously by doing anything about it. Apologizing for it, attempting to avoid it, or changing one’s behavior in light of it is perceived as unnecessary if not ridiculous. Consider an excerpt from Hughes’ routine:

“…no one says anything anymore just in case anyone else gets offended. What happens if you say that and someone gets offended? Well they can be offended, can’t they? What’s wrong with being offended? Well so what, be offended, nothing happened. You’re an adult, grow up, and deal with it. “I was offended!” Well, I don’t care! Nothing happens when you’re offended. [It’s not as if you say] “I went to the comedy show and the comedian said something about the Lord, and I was offended, and when I woke up in the morning, I had leprosy." Nothing happens…How do you make a law about offending people? How do you make it an offense to offend people? Being offended is subjective…What offends me may not offend you. And you want to make laws about this? I’m offended when I see boy bands for god sake.”218 Similarly, Dawkins demands “So what if I’m offended? So what if my feelings are hurt? Does that give me the right to prevent others from expressing their opinions?”219

Note the way these terms contribute to the critics’ mistaken judgments. Discomfort and offense are often associated with things of little consequence, such as boy bands and chewing gum. Offense in these cases does not appear to signal or connect to actual harms or problems

217 Hughes, S. (2009). Birmingham [Television series episode]. In Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow. BBC. Clip can be accessed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceS_jkKjIgo; Dawkins, R. (2008). I Am Offended! Lecture. UC-Berkeley. Accessed October 5th, 2018: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaJelU29jeI

218 Hughes, op. cit.

219 Dawkins, op. cit.

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(“Nothing happens!”) We need not and perhaps ought not to do anything about offense, perhaps not even complain to others when they offend us or take the potential to offend into account in monitoring our own speech. The Christakises suggestion is to “look away, or tell them you are offended.” Friedersdorf, too, seems to think anything beyond talking about being offended goes too far: “These students were offended by one person’s words, and were free to offer their own words in turn. That wasn’t enough for them…” Of course, should one mention being offended to someone like Hughes or Hawkins one is likely to be met with “So what?” or “Deal with it.”

Since offense does not warrant action, protest, or even much attention in common cases such as chewing gum or swear words, people may be more likely to assume the same is true anytime a person is described as offended. Though offense does not always warrant action, it is often used and understood to describe only responses to inconsequential events which demand no action.

Describing the Yale students as uncomfortable or offended primes listeners to perceive their outrage to be an overreaction and their demand for action ridicuous.

Perhaps most revealing is how the general term “hurt feelings” trivializes. Consider

Dawkins statement: “So what if I’m offended? So what if my feelings are hurt?” These questions are rhetorically useful because of the assumption that hurt feelings do not matter much. Or

Friedersdorf’s question “…they can’t bear this setting that millions of people would risk their lives to inhabit because one woman wrote an email that hurt their feelings?” His judgment that the students are worthy of derision is grounded in the assumption that hurt feelings are unimportant. The very idea of an adult finding hurt feelings unbearable is thought so obviously ridiculous it is offered as a rhetorical question, any further explanation or justification assumed to be unnecessary. This is why the students resist Christakis’s characterization of their complaint as being about “hurt feelings.” By apologizing for hurting their feelings, Christakis obscures the

124 connection between student response and external events, removes the question of his blameworthiness, and trivializes their concern. This would not be as easy to do if the

Christakises’ actions were characterized as insulting, disrespectful, or racist. But what makes an instance of racism or disrespect wrong is related to how it makes a person feel (in addition, of course, to other harms). Though hurting someone’s feelings does not always constitute a wrong, the assumption that hurt feelings are inconsequential or never reflect external problems is unfounded. Feelings can be hurt in response to events both significant and trivial. Nevertheless, it is common to assume that a response characterized as “hurt feelings” counts as insignificant.

Similarly, Haidt suggests that the alleged movement toward avoiding offense is unimportant by characterizing it as “largely about emotional well-being” (compared with past movements that had to do with hate speech and increasing diversity). This obscures the connection between emotional well-being and other things (such as being the target of hate speech or feeling the effects of a lack of diversity) and only makes sense as an argument if emotional well-being is assumed to be trivial.

In addition to the association of discomfort, offense, and hurt feelings with insignificance, the critics trivialize student outrage by repeatedly likening those who are outraged to small children. Marcus claims they are “behaving like infants,” calls their response a

“tantrum,” and advises them to “grow up.” The title of her essay is “College is not for coddling.”

Coddling, of course, is most commonly associated with a way of treating children, and an undesirable one at that. Haidt’s article, accompanied by a photo of a toddler sitting at a desk with a sweatshirt that reads “College,” is titled “The Coddling of the American Mind.” In it, he wonders how students will fare when they “leave the cocoon of adult protection” Friedersdorf refers to their behavior as a youthful mistake and predicts that they will “look back on [it] with

125 chagrin.” In each case, the comparison to children implies that their emotional response is inappropriate either due to underdeveloped emotion regulation skills or lack of a sense of proportion. Just as someone’s being offended need not guide our action in any particular way, we need not do anything when a toddler throws a tantrum. We presume she is not drawing attention to anything of consequence. Giving her uptake is perceived as not only unnecessary, but inappropriate. Coddled children are thought to be self-absorbed and have underdeveloped coping skills while parents who coddle are thought to be bad parents.

The kind of outrage expressed by the students is characterized as something one needs to grow out of rather than something that serves an important function in adult life. It is not, for example, perceived to be an important part of facilitating the dialogue between the students and

Christakis, of helping students to work through their own beliefs and values, or of revealing misunderstandings. It is not considered a potentially fitting response to what transpired. Even if outrage is not particularly fitting or beneficial in the Yale case, the extent to which the critics trivialize it reveals anti-emotion bias. At times, the critics seem to suggest that taking emotions seriously at all amounts to coddling; it is inappropriately indulgent and more likely to lead to arrested development than important insight.220 That these criticisms appear in widely-respected, politically “moderate” publications is an indication of how deeply ingrained this bias is.221

220 Sometimes it does not seem to be the case that the critics think giving any emotion uptake amounts to coddling. I assume none of the critics would assent to such a sweeping claim. Still, they do make fairly sweeping and dismissive claims about “hurt feelings” and Haidt especially is prone to making blanket statements about emotion. I discuss both Haidt and hurt feelings more in-depth in the next section.

221 All I mean here is that they are not, by most counts, extremist (not that they are considered “nonpartisan”).

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Emotions as unjustified

“I suppose we could agree that there is a difference between fantasizing about an individual character vs. appropriating a culture, wholesale, the latter of which could be seen as (tacky)(offensive)(jejeune) (hurtful), take your pick. But, then, I wonder what is the statute of limitations on dreaming of dressing as Tiana the Frog Princess if you aren’t a black girl from New Orleans? Is it okay if you are eight, but not 18? I don’t know the answer to these questions; they seem unanswerable. Or at the least, they put us on slippery terrain that I, for one, prefer not to cross. Which is my point. I don’t, actually, trust myself to foist my Halloweenish standards and motives on others. I can’t defend them anymore than you could defend yours.” Excerpt from Erika Christakis’s email

In addition to subtly suggesting insignificance, “discomfort” and “offense” characterize a response as something that need not be taken seriously because it is either subjective or mistaken. I use the term “unjustified” to talk about a common thread in a variety of emotion stereotypes. If emotions are typically subjective, not only is an emotional response not justified by objectively defensible reasons, it is not the kind of response that can be justified by objective reason. For example, the thinking goes that if what counts as an offensive costume is subjective, there is no way to settle the question of whether the costume is offensive or not.222 The opinion that it is offensive is no more or less justified than the opinion that it is not—as Erika Christakis claims “I can’t defend [my standards] anymore than you could defend yours.” In particular, taking any action in light of a subjective emotional response or treating it as informative will not be justified (for example: reconsidering whether a costume is disrespectful after someone has taken offense to it or trying to convince a friend not to wear a costume one finds offensive).

222 I take this to be one way the term “subjective” is commonly understood and used, though I acknowledge it is not the only way. I will say more on the concept of subjectivity later in this section.

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Similarly, if an emotion is the result of a false belief or is of disproportionate intensity it is unjustified because it is based on a mistake or a distortion. Many of the critics stress the respectful tone with which the Christakises engage, suggesting the assessment that student outrage is unjustified because it rests on the students’ mistaken belief that they have been treated disrespectfully.

Recall the analogy to pain and discomfort. Discomfort is sometimes distinguished from pain by its lesser significance or because it does not signal a problem beyond the discomfort itself. An uncomfortable emotional response is akin to finding a mattress uncomfortable. The discomfort does not typically indicate a problem with the mattress (the way a pain is more likely understood to be caused by and to signal some problem or dysfunction in the body). If it signals anything, it is something about the individual; she prefers firm rather than soft mattresses, or is especially picky. Not only are we unable to conclude that something is wrong with the mattress

(since being soft is not clearly objectionable), we may not even necessarily be able to conclude that it is a soft mattress: someone else might find it too firm. It is not clear how one could defend the claim that any particular preference or baseline is better than another, or why such a thing would be worth doing.

Like discomfort, emotional responses are sometimes perceived to be mostly about individual temperament and thus assumed not to reliably signal much about the external world. It might seem that the only information gleaned from the expressions of outrage is that the students were experiencing outrage. A conclusion commonly drawn from this perception—that many emotional responses are primarily reflections of temperament—is that it need not be taken particularly seriously. That is, we need not consider whether an emotion is appropriate or what it might reveal about the world, or modify behavior or judgments in light of an emotional response.

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For example, Haidt suggests it is misguided to regard offense as a response to something that is

“objectively wrong” rather than merely a “subjective feeling.” Friedersdorf suggests that the belief that feelings of offense might warrant attention or action “ought to be disputed rather than indulged.” This obscures the possibility that offense is a response to an objective wrong and does deserve attention. Surely the right approach would be to respond to offense by considering whether it is justified or warrants action rather than assuming it does not.

If a person is offended, she is “resentful or annoyed, typically as a result of a perceived insult.” That the definition specifies it is a perceived insult makes salient the possibility that the offended individual is mistaken; her interpretation of reality may be inaccurate. To offend is to

“cause to feel upset, annoyed, or resentful; be displeasing to.” Of course, one might be offended by a statement that constitutes a genuine insult or that is in fact morally or otherwise troubling.

But because the word encompasses emotional responses to both real and perceived insults, this language is often used to suggest that an infraction is merely perceived to be insulting (but is not really) or that whether it is insulting is a subjective matter rather than objectively harmful or wrong. In either case, a demand for action in light of someone’s being offended is presumed to be unjustified.

Ambiguity about what it means for something to be offensive both enables the trivialization of reactions characterized as “taking offense” and reveals prejudice against emotion. Recall Marcus’s statement that Christakis might have been wrong—that all things considered it might have been right to encourage students to be “considerate of how their costumes might offend others.”223 That is a much different suggestion than that students ought to

223 Marcus, Op. cit.

129 consider how a costume can be insulting, disrespectful, or racist. To be considerate of the fact that a costume might offend is to be aware that others may perceive it as an insult or experience uncomfortable emotional responses to it. It not only leaves open the possibility that those perceptions may be mistaken or simply a matter of individual temperament, it makes those possibilities salient. Thus, the language of offense is more likely to draw our attention to the offended individual (and her possibly mistaken perceptions or idiosyncratic sensibilities) than to the offensive behavior. In contrast, to consider whether a costume is disrespectful or racist is more likely to direct attention to features of the costume rather than the fallibility or subjectivity of the offended individual’s perception. And Marcus could have used this language even if she did not want to take a stance on whether the costumes were disrespectful or racist: it is still possible to conclude that someone feels disrespected because they are mistaken or oversensitive.

By instead talking about “whether they might offend,” she subtly suggests the possibility that taking offense is merely subjective or the result of a mistake. This shows how the emotional connotation of the word “offense” activates the prejudiced beliefs that emotions are uninformative or distorting—the possibility that offense is a subjective matter or mistaken is not suggested by the language of disrespect, which is not so specifically associated with emotion.

Offense as subjective The notion that emotions are subjective obscures the fact that emotional responses—even those largely informed by taste and preference—are often connected and responsive to reasons and can be revelatory of various kinds of important information. Notice how the question “Isn’t it just subjective?” often serves to end a conversation. The presumption is that subjective preferences or feelings are arbitrary and unimportant, so if an issue is subjective it is assumed that any further discussion is futile. Christakis claims “I don’t, actually, trust myself to foist my

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Halloweenish standards and motives on others. I can’t defend them anymore than you could defend yours.” Though she acknowledges a potential difference between dressing up as a specific character and “appropriating a culture wholesale,” she immediately dismisses this kind of distinction as worth considering because of her perception that the question of where we ought to draw the line is unanswerable or at least “slippery.”

But why think all Halloweenish standards and motives are indefensible? The impossibility of drawing a single firm, objectively defensible line between acceptable and offensive does not mean there are no clear cases or defensible standards. The distinction she offers is a good one; dressing up as a specific, innocuous person or character is much different from “appropriating a culture wholesale.” The costumes likely to offend are often not specific people but those constructed entirely from stereotype or steeped in trauma. For example, costumes in keeping with the dress code on an invitation to a party themed “Compton Cookout” which instructed “girls” to come as “ghetto chicks” (defined in part by their “short, nappy hair,”

“cheap weave, usually in bad colors,” and “very limited vocabulary”); a “Mexican” costume consisting of a false, thick moustache, sombrero, and sign that reads “I don’t cut grass I smoke it;” or a couples costume of a Customs and Border Patrol Officer and “ a Mexican” (this costume is composed of a fake moustache, sombrero, sarape, and handcuffs).224 Costumes of specific people or characters that do provoke outrage are often very obviously likely to perpetuate stereotype or trauma, for example, costumes of Ray Rice (a Black NFL player who was caught

224 Jones, A. (14, October 31). A Child's Treasury of This Year's Most Offensive Halloween Costumes. Retrieved from http://gawker.com/a-childs-treasury-of-this-years-most-offensive-hallowee-1652874318

131 on film assaulting his fiancée and then dragging her unconscious out of the elevator) which include blackface and a doll with a drawn-on black eye, dragged around by her hair.225

There may also be complicated cases. Costumes of actual, specific characters that come from books or films which perpetuate false cultural and historical narratives (such as Disney’s

Pocahontas) or accurate but nonspecific costumes borrowed from another culture (such as a white person wearing traditional Lakota dance regalia) are not as obviously problematic as the previous examples. But it is a mistake to conclude from the moral ambiguity of a Pocahontas costume that there are no clear cases. There are several defensible standards that warrant taking offense. Good candidates include costumes that perpetuate oppression by trivializing or normalizing stereotypes or instances of abuse and costumes that are inherently alienating or traumatizing. Christakis obscures these harms by claiming that there is nothing to say in defense of any given standard or motive for choosing a costume. She fails to acknowledge the hurt, disrespect, and alienation caused by offensive costumes as well as how they fit into a larger pattern of harm and disenfranchisement of oppressed groups. Suggesting that students ignore offensive costumes or work it out among themselves places the burden largely on students who are detrimentally affected by the costumes, and may have the effect of alienating these students further if attempts to educate their peers are not well-received.

It is worth noting that the IAC email does not list rules or policies. There is no ban on any particular costume. There is no threat of punishment or negative consequence for a student who wears an offensive costume. There may be good reasons not to ban or punish specific kinds of dress, even if there exists a good argument that they are offensive or morally problematic. But

225 Ibid.

132 that is not at issue here. Christakis expresses skepticism that justification for feeling offended could even exist. She suggests that even if the question of what constitutes legitimate offense could be settled, encouraging students to be mindful of offense demonstrates lost faith in young people’s capacity to ignore things that “trouble” them. She fails to consider the possibility that encouragement to be mindful of offensive costumes could be motivated by the belief that students should not have to exercise their capacity to ignore or confront such insult or from the desire to affirm a commitment to inclusion on the part of the university.

Emotion as distorting Emotional response is sometimes presumed not only to lack justification but to actively distort proper perception and judgment. In an article referenced by Marcus, Friedersdorf, and the

Christakises, Haidt expresses alarm at what he perceives as the rising prevalence of “emotional reasoning.” He calls emotional reasoning a “cognitive distortion,” referencing two different definitions found in psychological literature: “assuming that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are” and “letting your feelings guide your interpretation of reality.”

He claims that “critical thinking requires grounding one’s beliefs in evidence rather than in emotion or desire” and thus concludes that people would be best off “talking [themselves] down from the idea that each…emotional response represents something true or important.”

Haidt is worried that concern for emotional well-being creates “…a culture in which everyone must think twice before speaking up, lest they face charges of insensitivity, aggression, or worse” and asks: “Would [students] not be better prepared to flourish if we taught them to question their own emotional reactions, and to give people the benefit of the doubt?”

Bias can be identified in the global nature of these claims. While it is a legitimate point that assuming negative emotions necessarily reflect reality would yield many distorted

133 perceptions, it is a big leap from this observation to the claim that one ought never to allow emotion to guide interpretations of reality. Yet this is a leap Haidt makes without comment. He excludes emotion from ever counting as evidence for a belief. These sweeping claims implicate all emotion, denying the possibility that emotion can have an important role in reasoning and obscuring the fact that emotions are often an appropriate response to something. Although the experience of being outraged is not infallible proof of injustice, it is simply false to suggest that outrage and injustice are entirely unrelated. It is also worth pointing out that Haidt begins by lamenting a culture in which people must think twice before speaking and concludes that part of the solution is to think twice before taking emotional responses seriously. Though at first he seems critical of increased scrutiny and self-regulation, it becomes clear that this concern does not extend to increased scrutiny and regulation of emotion. This inconsistency reveals anti- emotion bias.

Conclusion The language of discomfort and offense enables the critics to characterize student emotion in such a way that presumes it is flawed or unimportant. Emotionally-coded language effectively primes the reader to perceive student response as something that need not be taken seriously because it is either insignificant, mistaken, or subjective. The fact that mere use of the term “hurt feelings” can trivialize demonstrates this dismissive tendency. We can identify bias against emotion in the effectiveness of using emotionally-loaded terms to shift the conversation from the context of oppression and potentially objectionable actions or institutions to problems with individual perception. Though of course humans are fallible, emotionally-coded language unfairly presumes distortion and obscures the possibility of fitting connection with external events.

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Oppressed Populations and Anti-Emotion Bias The effects of anti-emotion prejudice are not uniform. Though the emotional life of most everyone in our culture is negatively affected by this bias in some way, it also plays a notable role in perpetuating the oppression of women and people of color among others. In what follows,

I discuss how groups that are stereotyped to be emotional in certain ways are made especially vulnerable to the harmful effects of anti-emotion bias, focusing specifically on the way that women are stereotyped as emotional and Black women are stereotyped as angry.

Stereotypes and Increased Perception of Emotionality Many stereotypes of oppressed groups have specifically to do with emotions. Women are supposedly emotional,226 Black people thought to be angry. Latinas are believed to have fiery tempers and to be, along with Black women, gay men, and sometimes white women, sassy.

These beliefs are often taken to be self-evident, even assumed to have biological explanations, despite data contradicting these claims.227

226 Although the term is nonspecific, “emotional” seems to implicate what one might think of as “tender” emotions but not others. To characterize an experience or a person as emotional usually does not imply an abundance of anger, bitterness, jealousy, or hatred. If one were to describe herself as feeling “emotional” we would be more likely to interpret her as meaning that she felt ready to cry at any moment or was feeling very affectionate or compassionate or sad than that she was especially angry. On the other hand, the term emotional is vague. There is no one emotion or combination of emotions that is typically intended by the use of this term. Sue Campbell points out that tears are associated with the term emotional. But, tears may express nearly any emotion from happiness to sorrow to guilt to anger or frustration, so the term emotional cannot even quite be pinned down to a catchall term for the so-called tender emotions. This vagueness reinforces the conception of emotion as irrational. Campbell points out that “the deliberate vagueness of the term which lumps all emotions together negates the necessity for any specific uptake.” This may explain the seeming inconsistency in the empirical data that shows white women and girls to be perceived as more emotional but not angry, for example. (Campbell, S (1994). Being Dismissed: The Politics of Emotional Expression, Hypatia, 9:3, 61).

227 Mabry, JB and Kiecolt, KJ (2005). Anger in black and white: Race, alienation, and anger. JOURNAL OF HEALTH AND SOCIAL BEHAVIOR, 46:1, 85-101; J. Celeste Walley-Jean. (2009). Debunking the Myth of the “Angry Black Woman”: An Exploration of Anger in Young African American Women. Black Women, Gender Families, 3(2), 68-86. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/blacwomegendfami.3.2.0068; Deng Y, Chang L, Yang M, Huo M, Zhou R (2016) Gender Differences in Emotional Response: Inconsistency between Experience and Expressivity. PLoS ONE 11(6): e0158666. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0158666; Robin W. Simon and Leda E. Nath, "Gender and Emotion in the United States: Do Men and Women Differ in Self‐Reports of Feelings and Expressive Behavior?," American Journal of Sociology 109, no. 5 (March 2004): 1137-1176.

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Given the nature of stereotypes, it is plausible that women would more often be perceived as (inappropriately) emotional and that people racialized as Black would more often be perceived as (inappropriately) angry. People more often and more quickly assess members of stereotyped groups in a stereotype-consistent manner.228 People tend to use less evidence to make judgments that confirm stereotypes and require greater evidence before making stereotype-inconsistent judgments (compared with levels of evidence used to make similar judgments about non- stereotyped groups).229 Ambiguous evidence is likely to be interpreted as confirming stereotypes.230 The meaning of an action or trait may also be interpreted differently when the individual is a member of a stereotyped group: whether an angry, ranting person counts as understandably upset or unstable and irrational may depend upon their social identities.231

Evidence taken to confirm stereotypes is likely to be noticed, perceived to be relevant, and remembered, while evidence that would disconfirm stereotypes is often written off as atypical.232

There is indeed data suggestive of the influence of stereotypes on evaluation of emotion.

Asked to characterize women, the third-most common trait chosen to describe white women was

“sensitive” while the third-most common descriptor for black women was “aggressive.” Other top-ten traits included “quick-tempered” and “bitchy” for black women and “emotional” and

228 Bijlstra, Gijsbert & Holland, Rob & Dotsch, Ron & Hugenberg, Kurt & Wigboldus, Daniel. (2014). Stereotype Associations and Emotion Recognition. Personality & social psychology bulletin. 40. 10.1177/0146167213520458.

229 Biernat M, Ma JE. Stereotypes and the confirmability of trait concepts. Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2005; 31: 483– 495. doi: 10.1177/0146167204271712

230 Kunda, Z. (1999). Social Cognition: Making Sense of People. Cambridge, Mass: A Bradford Book. 354-355.

231 Ibid., 346-347

232 Ibid., 384

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“kind” for white women.233 Many studies have found that girls are perceived by their parents and teachers to be more emotional than boys.234 Ambiguous infant facial expressions were interpreted by parents in stereotype-consistent patterns: (white) infants labeled female were more often interpreted to be sad and when labeled male, more often as angry. Ambiguous expressions in adults were also interpreted consisted with gender stereotypes—even the unambiguously angry faces of white women were less likely to be interpreted as angry.235 Emotional expressions are rated more intense when they appear to belong to a woman rather than a man.236 In another study, subjects more frequently judged that emotional expressions by women were due to their

“being emotional” and emotional expressions in men were more frequently judged to be due to their “having a bad day.”237, 238 Research showing that (presumably white) boys are given

“greater latitude” to express anger at school is perhaps evidence that male anger is more often perceived to be fitting.239 At the very least it is more often treated as such.

233 Weitz, R., & Gordon, L. (1993). Images of black women among anglo college students. Sex Roles, 28(1-2), 19- 34. DOI: 10.1007/BF00289745

234 Else-Quest, N. M., Hyde, J. S., Goldsmith, H. H., & Van Hulle, C. A. (2006). Gender differences in temperament: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 132, 33–72.

235 Plant, Ashby & Shibley Hyde, Janet & Keltner, Dacher & Devine, Patricia. (2000). The Gender Stereotyping of Emotions. Psychology of Women Quarterly. 24. 81 - 92. 10.1111/j.1471-6402.2000.tb01024.x.

236 Plant, E.A., Kling, K.C. & Smith, G.L. The Influence of Gender and Social Role on the Interpretation of Facial Expressions. Sex Roles (2004) 51: 187. https://doi.org/10.1023/B:SERS.0000037762.10349.13

237 Barrett, L. F., & Bliss-Moreau, E. (2009). She’s emotional. He’s having a bad day: Attributional explanations for emotion stereotypes. Emotion, 9(5), 649-658.

238 While these judgments are not synonymous with judgments of aptness (e.g. it is possible that subjects would have judged an emotional response to be both apt and due to “being emotional” or inapt and the result of “having a bad day.”) it seems plausible that responses resulting from “being emotional” will largely be judged to be inapt will those attributed to “having a bad day” will be perceived as fitting (see discussion on the term “emotional” below).

239 Eder, Donna. 1995. School Talk: Gender and Adolescent Culture. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.

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Stereotypes and Increased Perception of Inaptness The stereotype of women as emotional at least sometimes amounts to the more specific claim that women are inappropriately emotional. Consider that the term “emotional” often

(though not always) implies intensity, instability, irrationality, or excess. We do not typically characterize mild responses as emotional. Asserting the someone is emotional is typically a negative evaluation. Even when the claim that someone is emotional does not (straightforwardly) express disapproval, it often characterizes the emotionality as a handicap or flaw (an endearing one, perhaps, but a flaw nonetheless). For example, one might report that a bereaved mother was emotional at her child’s funeral. This is unlikely to be a criticism, but is probably meant to convey a kind of intensity that is incapacitating. Or consider another case: a man posts a list to a humor forum called “Reasons My Wife is Crying” which include items such as “There were no biscuits in the house,” “I tried to hold her hand when she wasn’t expecting it,” and “She watched a video about a dog.” The list went viral, and while much of its reception was positive (people found it heartwarming or hilarious), it was still based upon the evaluation of her response as excessively emotional. The perception of the woman as sweet or cute invokes associations that could be damaging in other contexts—for example this kind of sentimental emotionality may be associated with weakness, childishness, or the need for protection. (Of course, there were also those who responded by straightforwardly calling her ridiculous, unstable, or fragile).240 The state of being emotional is frequently perceived to undermine credibility: we encourage people

240 Gillies, Aaron (TechnicallyRon). (2015, November 22). “My wife cries at absolutely anything. I mean, ANYTHING. So i started writing the reasons down because reasons. (Image)” [Tweet] https://twitter.com/TechnicallyRon/status/668466668591521792, Gillies, Aaron. (2015, November 23). My wife cries at absolutely anything. I mean, ANYTHING. So i started writing the reasons down because reasons [Online Forum]. Retrieved from: https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/3txkhp/my_wife_cries_at_absolutely_anything_i_mean/; Paules-Bronet, I. (2017, September 07). Husband Shares Handwritten List Of The Most Ridiculous Things That Have Made His Wife Cry. Retrieved from https://www.littlethings.com/reasons-my-wife-is-crying/

138 not to make decisions “in the heat of emotion” and characterize beliefs founded on “emotional” perceptions as prejudiced or irrational. So, this stereotype primes us to perceive women as not just emotional but inappropriately emotional. Their emotional response is perceived either as inapt or, though completely fitting (as in the case of the bereaved parent), associated with being overwhelmed and incapacitated.

Like the Emotional Woman, the “Angry Black Woman” stereotype also tends to imply excess.241 It would be odd to characterize someone as angry simply because they responded with anger of apt intensity when it was fitting to do so. To characterize someone as angry implies they are generally angry, they tend to become more intensely angry than is warranted, or that they are too-easily angered. For example, after Serena Williams became frustrated with an umpire in the

2018 U.S. Open, Mark Knight drew a cartoon depicting her as a toddler throwing a tantrum.242

Williams’ anger (or frustration) was not presented as a response to an aggressive or unfair call but as immature, childish, uncontrolled, and obscenely self-absorbed. The Angry Black Woman stereotype is often used for comic relief, and is portrayed as ridiculous (e.g. Tyler Perry’s

Madea). Her anger is perceived to be inapt, something to be laughed at rather than taken seriously.

241 Black women are, of course, women, and thus we would expect them to be subject to the “emotional woman” stereotype as well. However, the “emotional” stereotype sometimes seems to preclude anger (as discussed in Footnote 25 and suggested by the empirical evidence). My guess would be that (in dominant culture) generalizations about “women” typically include an implicit assumption of whiteness. (See Lorde, A. (1984). Age, Race, Class, Sex: Women Redefining Difference. In Sister outsider: Essays and speeches. Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press and Ko, S. (2017). By “Human,” Everybody Just Means “White”. In Aphro-ism: essays on pop culture, feminism, and black veganism from two sisters. New York: Lantern Books.) However, the term “emotional” is vague and humans are complex and not always consistent, so I imagine Black women may sometimes be subject to the “emotional” stereotype and sometimes subject to the “angry” stereotype despite the apparent tension between the two.

242 Prasad, R. (2018, September 11). Serena Williams and the trope of the 'angry black woman'. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45476500

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Differing Norms So far, I have discussed how the nature of stereotyping increases the likelihood of an individual’s character or actions being perceived as consistent with the stereotype, and argued that the Emotional Woman and Angry Black Woman stereotypes imply excessive or inappropriate emotion. Thus, it is plausible that the anger of Black women and the emotion of women in general is especially likely to be perceived as inappropriate, making them especially vulnerable to the harms of anti-emotion bias.

However, at least in the case of the Emotional Woman, there exists not only a stereotype but also a prescriptive norm. That is, in addition to being stereotyped as emotional, it is commonly thought that women ought to be especially emotional. There is empirical data that suggests women are sometimes evaluated more favorably when perceived as “emotional” (here meaning the “tender” emotions—often described as caring, warm, or nurturing—rather than all emotions), or penalized when they are perceived as failing to be sufficiently emotional. For example, one analysis of student reports of their best and worst university instructors suggests that “the worst women teachers are sometimes explicitly indicted for being bad women,” and often described as bitchy, cold, mean, and uncaring. The best women teachers were described as

“nurturing” much more often than men. 243 Female (but not male) junior attorneys seem to be penalized on performance evaluations if they are not rated highly on “interpersonal warmth.”244

The prescriptive norm is also found in Complementarianism, a theological view accepted by many conservative Christian denominations. On this view, God prescribes different,

243 Sprague, J. and Massoni, K. (2005). Student Evaluations and Gendered Expectations: What We Can’t Count Can Hurt Us. In Sex Roles, 53: 11/12, 779-793

244 Biernat, M., Tocci, M., and Williams, J. (2011). The Language of Performance Evaluations: Gender-Based Shifts in Content and Consistency of Judgment. In Social Psychological and Personality Science. 3: 2, 186-192

140 complementary roles to men and women. Men lead and provide for the family while women serve as helpmate and care for the home and children. To serve this function well, women ought to be “compassionate, empathetic…gentle, warm, tender…supportive, intuitive…sensitive…vulnerable (in the sense of emotionally open)…sweet, expressive, charming, delicate…”245 I turn now to discussing how this prescriptive norm may further exacerbate perceptions of female emotion as inapt.

Emotionality and (White) Femininity Not only is it the case that women are associated with emotionality, many people think that women should be more emotional than men. This exacerbates perceptions of women as inappropriately emotional because they are held to two (often conflicting) standards: norms of femininity and (ostensibly universal) standards of fitting emotion. Emotional responses congruent with standards of femininity sometimes conflict with what is otherwise regarded as apt. For example, Sue Campbell observes that sentimentality “…is a virtue because…women are encouraged to cultivate the tender emotions—compassion, for example—for their work as nurturers. It is a limiting virtue because its use as a critical term is to imply that feminine ethical actions when they are outside the domestic sphere…either are not effective or are not appropriate actions, and do not have to be taken seriously.”246 That is, women are expected to be nurturing, but this trait is perceived as inappropriate in contexts other than domestic life. For example, women leaders who express tender emotions are perceived as incompetent. Yet women leaders who are not perceived as caring and nurturing are perceived as unlikable. Evaluations of male

245 Piper, J. and Grudem, W. (eds) (1991). RECOVERING BIBLICAL MANHOOD AND WOMANHOOD: A Response to Evangelical Feminism. Wheaton: Crossway Books. 38

246 Campbell, op. cit., 61

141 leaders generally do not treat competence and likability as mutually exclusive.247 Campbell notes, too, that criticisms of sentimentality in literature emerged right around the time women began publishing novels.248 Sentimentality may be valued in mothers or wives, but it is not perceived as a worthwhile tone for literature. Others have observed that novels or memoirs involving vulnerable expressions of emotion and emotional content are perceived as inappropriate and embarrassing when written by women but brave when written by male authors.249 Female emotion, especially in the public sphere, is especially likely to be perceived as inappropriate because there is a much narrower range of emotion and emotional intensity that counts as appropriate by both standards.

The tendency to characterize female emotional expressions as “being emotional” rather than responses to external events may also contribute to judgments of inaptness.250 An emotion attributed to an oversensitive disposition may simply be assumed irrational rather than assessed for aptness—for example someone might pause to consider why a man is unexpectedly expressing anger but never even bother considering why a woman responds angrily because an explanation—that she is simply emotional—is readily available.

247 Catalyst (2007). The Double-Bind Dilemma for Women6 in Leadership: Damned if You Do, Doomed if You Don’t.

248 Campbell, op. cit., 58a

249 Alderton, D. (2018). Men are applauded when they express emotion – women are just told they’re over-sharing. [online] Newstatesman.com. Available at: https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2018/05/men-are- applauded-when-they-express-emotion-women-are-just-told-they-re [Accessed 19 Sep. 2018].

250 Barrett, op. cit.

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CHAPTER 5: THE BEGINNINGS OF A SOLUTION

Introduction In the previous chapters, I identified a legacy of problematic views of emotion. These views are problematic because they characterize emotions too crudely and construe the value of emotion too narrowly. I have identified remnants of this legacy in contemporary theory and practice, and argued that as a result of this problematic legacy, the threshold of emotional intensity perceived as acceptable is lower than it ought to be. I have argued that there is an anti- emotion bias consistent with this legacy that commonly results in mistaken judgments of emotional responses (especially emotional responses to oppression). In light of these observations and arguments, I concur with D’Arms and Jacobson that “the philosophical study of the emotions must be far more delicate than it has been.”251 That is, there is a need for increased care and nuance in theorizing and evaluating emotion.

In this chapter, I offer the beginnings of a solution. Some changes are in order that will help to facilitate recognition of the complexity and expansive value of emotion. First, we ought to pay more attention to the variety of evaluative standards by which we assess emotion in our theories and everyday judgment. Paying attention to the many ways emotion can be good or bad will result in greater appreciation of the complexity of emotion, and is likely to expand our

251 D’Arms and Jacobson, op. cit., 88

143 conception of the range of emotion that is valuable and appropriate. Beyond simply acknowledging the variety of standards, we ought to take seriously the gravity of conflict between standards. Finally, we ought to accord emotional responses some (defeasible)

“presumption of warrant.” That is: absent countervailing evidence, we are justified in assuming our emotional responses are warranted. Approaching emotion in these ways will help to avoid theoretical errors and mistaken judgments, provide a more complete understanding of the emotions, and suggest new ways of thinking about emotional life.

In what follows, I briefly review the types of evaluative standards and the ways the can come into conflict. Then, I say a bit about the justification for my three proposals and show how they might help to improve theoretical and practical evaluations of emotion. Finally, I consider what this means for the work of dismantling oppression. Given that evaluations of emotional responses to oppression are especially vulnerable to error, my proposals not only improve our philosophical theories of emotion, but are an important part of the project of dismantling racist and sexist oppression.

The variety of evaluative standards Let’s review the various standards that might be used to evaluate emotion. Evaluating an emotion by moral standards might include considering whether an emotion leads to moral or immoral behavior; whether it opens up the possibility for forgiveness; or whether it enables sympathy. Criticisms of student outrage, for example, included the claim that outrage motivated them to bully and malign innocent people. We might also consider whether the emotion itself is somehow moral or immoral. Hatred and envy are sometimes regarded as morally bad to feel, for example. An emotion might be admirable or criticizeable if it constitutes a kind of moral achievement or flaw, or if it is closely related to moral traits. For example, anger may be a kind

144 of moral achievement insofar as it requires conceiving of oneself as an equally worthy moral agent, builds self-respect, and flows from the accurate perception of certain kinds of moral facts

(e.g. that one has been wronged).252

Judgments of whether an emotion is good or bad for one’s well-being could include determining how it contributes to an individual’s ability to cope, or how the emotion affects one’s ability to flourish or find meaning in life. For example, in Viktor Frankl’s account of how it was possible to create a fulfilling and meaningful life even after surviving the horrors of a concentration camp, he observes that survivors who remained bitter were not able to find meaning.253 So, we might think that bitterness is bad for well-being. Haidt (plausibly) implies that “constant outrage” makes it difficult or impossible to flourish. It also seems plausible that experiencing some measure of joy or gratitude is part of what it is to have well-being.

We can also judge whether an emotion is strategically useful or counterproductive to specific ends that do not necessarily fit within the scope of morality or well-being. Anger, for example, could be counterproductive if it alienates a person with whom one hoped to be friends.

We can evaluate the impact of anger on the aim of developing a particular friendship separately from moral implications or the effect on well-being. Or, we might imagine that an artist creates their best work in the midst of despair—the despair is conducive to creating great art even if it has a negative impact on the artist’s well-being.

252 See, for example: Lorde A. (2007). The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism. In: Sister Outsider: Essays & Speeches by Audre Lorde, Berkeley: Crossing Press; Srinivasan, A. (2018), The Aptness of Anger. Journal of Political Philosophy. 26 (2): 123-144; Frye, Marilyn (1983). “A note on anger” in The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory. The Crossing Press; Bell, M. (2009). Anger, Virtue, and Oppression. In Lisa Tessman (ed.), Feminist Ethics and Social and Political Philosophy: Theorizing the Non-Ideal. Springer. pp. 165-183

253 Frankl, V. E. (1984). Man's search for meaning: An introduction to logotherapy. New York: Simon & Schuster.

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Finally, an emotion can be evaluated by standards of fit. An emotion is fitting (or apt) when it “fits” the situation. Outrage is fitting, for example, when a person is victim to egregious wrongdoing. If an individual is outraged but there has been no actual wrongdoing, then their outrage is inapt (or ill-fitting). An emotional response might also be judged inapt (or ill-fitting) if its “size” is judged to be disproportionate to the situation. Loss of a favorite pair of earrings could make some sadness appropriate; death of a loved one constitutes a much greater loss and makes much more intense sadness appropriate.

It is important to note that these standards can come into conflict. For example, it might be inapt but also strategically useful to express outrage in a given moment. A child’s outrage at their parent who refuses to buy them candy is not apt, nevertheless, it would be strategic for the child to express outrage loudly and persistently in the checkout line if it results in the parent giving in to their demand for candy. Or consider Frankl’s discussion of the bitter Holocaust survivor. The bitterness is perfectly apt, but it undermines well-being.

Justifying the three proposals Once the variety of standards has been identified, I should think it relatively obvious and uncontroversial that we ought to attend to it in our evaluations of emotion. Paying attention to the variety of standards means that if an emotion is evaluated exclusively along a single dimension, it ought to be acknowledged that this is an incomplete evaluation. “All-things- considered” judgments ought to evaluate each of these dimensions, and provide arguments for how to prioritize or weigh each dimension in the case of conflict.

Taking seriously the gravity of conflict means that the multiple standards should not just be acknowledged, but considered. Recall the examples Srinivasan provides—those who claim that people ought not to feel counterproductive anger. The aptness of counterproductive anger

146 may be superficially acknowledged but it is then brushed aside without argument (e.g. “Your anger is apt but what good will it do you?”). Serious consideration demands recognition of the normative conflict that is present when standards diverge. Even if there is a good argument for prioritizing the demands of one standard over another, recognizing the weight of the normative conflict means actually providing that argument. If one is urged to let go of counterproductive anger in service of some political goal, she ought to be given reasons why that political goal should be prioritized over feeling apt emotion. It may also involve recognizing the damage of conflict. That is, suppressing anger in order to achieve a political goal is a sacrifice and should be perceived as such.

My third suggestion is the most controversial: that we ought to accord our emotional responses a “default presumption of warrant.” I borrow this idea from Justin D’Arms. D’Arms’ claim is based on the fact that emotional reactions are “typically experienced as sensitivities to evaluative features of the world,” and “amenable to forms of rational assessment.”254 Feeling sad is a reason to believe that something is sad, feeling shame a reason to believe that something is shameful. Of course, these feelings are not proof that an event is sad or an action shameful. One might be mistaken about the facts or subject to distorted notions of what is shameful or sad about something other than what seems sad in the moment. Still, because those emotions are sensitive to certain features of the world, (absent other considerations) it is justified to grant some authority to emotional responses in evaluations of whether something is sad or shameful.

Put another way: it is reasonable to assume as a default position that emotional responses are fitting. To reiterate: this is defeasible. I am not claiming that most emotional responses are

254 D’Arms, J. (1999), Empathy and Evaluative Inquiry. In Chicago-Kent Law Review 74:4, pg. 1471

147 warranted, that inapt responses are rare, or that it is especially difficult to make the case that an emotion is inapt. I am not claiming that reflection upon emotional responses is unnecessary, or only called for if we are confronted with some glaring inconsistency. Rather, the claim is simply that given the ways in which emotions are sensitive to certain features of the world, we should approach them, initially, as if they are fitting.

It might seem unclear why this presumption is justified, given that emotional responses do not infallibly track reality. It also might seem as if we would come to more or less the same result with either the opposite approach (a defeasible presumption that emotions are inappropriate unless and until we can articulate why they are fitting) or with complete agnosticism about whether they are fitting. If these are defeasible presumptions, it might seem as if (at least in the ideal world) one would come to the same conclusions no matter the starting place. There are three reasons why I think we nevertheless ought to start with a presumption of warrant.

First, we are not in the ideal world. In this world (at least: in the dominant culture of this part of the world) there is a legacy of ideas which are hostile to emotion. Anti-emotion bias is common. The presumption of warrant may serve as a gentle corrective to prevailing attitudes and norms that tend to put emotion on the defensive from the start. Perhaps more importantly, starting with the presumption that emotions are inapt suggests that the appropriate default emotional state is dispassion. This is not true of a human life. It is difficult to imagine describing a single day in the life of a human that does not make it fitting to feel a variety of emotions. If one’s starting place is the presumption that emotions are inapt, it disconnects emotions from the features of the world to which they respond. It is a bit like the way one might regard a broken clock stuck at 2:30. That the clock reads 2:30 is never a reason to believe it is actually 2:30,

148 although twice a day it happens to show the correct time. The difference is that emotions don’t just happen to be appropriate responses once in a while. They are sensitive to features of the world such that when emotions arise there is reason to think those features are the cause, however cautious we might want to be given the possibility of “false positives.”

How the proposals improve evaluations of emotion We can see how implementing these proposals would preclude the kinds of mistakes

D’Arms and Srinivasan identify, and which I identify in Chapter 2. Conflating standards—for example: claiming that intense emotions are inapt because they are counterproductive to some aim—can be avoided by paying attention to the different evaluative standards. Taking seriously the gravity of conflicts between them can prevent any one disadvantageous aspect of an emotion from being treated as a dispositive reason not to feel it unless further argument is given.

A more complete picture: Haidt and the conflict between standards Implementing these solutions also reveals a more robust understanding of emotion.

Consider Haidt’s view. He claims his argument is a practical one, giving a cursory acknowledgement of the possible fittingness of certain responses but concluding they are nevertheless counterproductive and bad for well-being and thus ought to be avoided. Let us stipulate that Haidt is right regarding the case of Yale student outrage: the students would better achieve their goals of change and also improve their own well-being if they avoided such outrage. Consider how this situation appears on Haidt’s view and how it would appear if one adopted the solutions I am suggesting. On Haidt’s view, we never assume unpleasant emotions are warranted. Upon feeling outrage, the students ought to try “talking [themselves] down from

149 the idea that [the]…emotional response represents something true or important.”255 What happens if the students determine that their outrage does represent something true or important?

Haidt sidesteps this question, insisting that they will be better off either way if they calm down.

On my view, when the students feel outrage, they do not automatically assume it is unwarranted.

Reflecting on their rage, they identify features of the situation that make their response appropriate, articulated in their open letter. Nevertheless, we can imagine a student deciding they would be more effective in bringing about change if they suppress the outrage. Or, we can imagine a student refusing to allow outrage to bubble up at all, avoiding involvement in the incident in order to protect her well-being,

The starting point for Haidt’s view is suspicion of emotion: he assumes that it will be inapt or cause harm. As discussed in the previous section, this approach skips past and obscures the point that emotions are sensitive responses to the world. We see the result of approaching emotions with suspicion in Haidt’s failure to distinguish apt from inapt emotion. At first he seems to justify suspicion by pointing out that emotions are not always fitting, but then brushes past the significance of apt emotion, insisting his argument is based on well-being and practical efficacy. Presumptive warrant, proper attention to the variety of standards, and serious consideration of conflict between standards enable us to account for the aptness of emotion even if we ultimately come to the same conclusion (that we ought to avoid or decrease outrage. My solutions are conducive to a more complete picture of the value of emotion than Haidt’s. Though both might ultimately conclude that it is better not to feel the outrage, on my view we do not lose the sense of how emotions are connected to the world, or of the cost incurred when standards

255 Haidt., J and Lukianoff, G (2015). “The Coddling of the American Mind” The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/.

150 conflict. There is space for important theoretical concepts such as affective injustice which are likely to be passed over on Haidt’s view.

Increased nuance: Nussbaum and objects of emotion These solutions can also open up space for a more nuanced understanding of both the objects of emotion and the emotions themselves. Consider Nussbaum’s view on anger. Although

Nussbaum does not explicitly begin from a place of pure suspicion, she seems to veer closer to suspicion than a presumption of warrant. She highlights the fallibility of emotional response, beginning her characterization of anger with Aristotle’s definition, pointing out that “By twice repeating 'imagined' (phainomenês), Aristotle emphasizes that what is relevant to the emotion is the way the situation is seen from the angry person's viewpoint, not the way it really is, which could, of course, be different.” 256 Her book on anger begins with the story of the Furies I discussed in Chapter 1, a depiction of anger that is neither subtle nor flattering (to put it mildly).

More than anything, it is difficult to imagine how she would arrive at such a narrow conception of anger without starting off already suspicious of its value.

It will help to elaborate on Nussbaum’s conception of anger. On her view, a wish for payback is a conceptual part of anger. There are two kinds of standard anger: anger that is a response to significant harm, and anger that is a response to “status-injury.” Anger in the first case in inapt, because it rests on the mistaken belief that getting revenge (i.e. making the offender suffer) will somehow right the original wrong. Anger in the second case may be apt: revenge that damages the offender’s status might indeed improve one’s own relative status. But in this case the anger is morally problematic. One ought not to be so concerned with one’s own

256 Nussbaum, Martha C. (2015). Transitional Anger. Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1 (1), 41

151 standing, according to Nussbaum. So, she concludes that one ought virtually never to feel anger, and that responses which do not contain the notion of revenge are not really anger at all:

“I am hereby renouncing a range of things I said in earlier work about the constructive role of anger, and I am now saying something very radical: that in a sane and not excessively anxious and status-focused person, anger's idea of retribution or payback is a brief dream or cloud, soon dispelled by saner thoughts of personal and social welfare. So anger (if we understand it to involve, internally, a wish for retributive suffering) quickly puts itself out of business, in that even the residual focus on punishing the offender is soon seen as part of a set of projects for improving both offenders and society--and the emotion that has this goal is not so easy to see as anger. It looks more like compassionate hope. When anger does not put itself out of business in this way--and we all know that in a multitude of cases it does not--its persistence and power, I claim, owes much, even perhaps everything, to an underlying competitive obsession, which is the only thing that really makes sense of retribution as ordinarily conceived…In a rational person, anger, realizing that, soon laughs at itself and goes away.”257 This is a very limited view of what constitutes anger. An emotion is only anger when there is a desire to make the perpetrator of a perceived wrong suffer. It only makes sense as a response to significant damage or status injuries. Perhaps taking seriously the variety of evaluative standards and the existence of conflict between them would help here. Although

Nussbaum officially recognizes the different evaluative standards—she argues that anger is always inapt or morally problematic, and rarely useful, suggesting she recognizes the difference between aptness, morality, and utility—it seems plausible that moral and prudential concerns may have infected her definition of anger, given how incredibly narrow that definition is. For example, perhaps tacit assumptions that anger will be immoral, counterproductive, or inapt kept her from noticing the existence of anger that is not about revenge.

Nussbaum does articulate one exception to the claim that anger always involves a payback wish. A phenomenon she calls “transitional anger” never entertains the notion of

257 Ibid., 51-52.

152 revenge. Rather, “the entire content of [this] emotion is, 'How outrageous! Something must be done about this.'”258 She claims that the target of the emotion is the offender—that is, the anger is somehow about or directed at the wrongdoer—but that it “focuses on future welfare from the start.”259 One can better avoid the errors of standard anger and move toward transitional anger by taking up the offender’s point of view, expanding beyond a concern for oneself and one’s own status.260 However, the concept of transitional anger is not enough to render her view plausible. It is worth noting, first of all, that Nussbaum is not committed to the claim that transitional anger is truly anger. She calls it “quasi-anger” and a “borderline case” and is agnostic about whether or not it counts as a species of anger.261 So, we may or may not recognize the phenomena she has in mind as cases of anger. Nussbaum also claims that transitional anger is “rarer than we often think,” so this is not a concept likely to expand the overly-narrow definition of anger by much.262

Rather than providing a more expansive, nuanced view of anger and what it is about, the target of anger (what is it “about”) seems to be missing from the concept of transitional anger.

Nussbaum claims that the target of transitional anger is the offender. But it is not clear how that is true when the entire content of transition anger is “That’s outrageous! Something ought to be done about this.” While Nussbaum claims that the “something” which ought to be done leaves open the possibility that punishing the offender could be a part of securing future welfare for the victim, a particular wrong done by a particular agent still seems to get lost. Imagine an angry

258 Ibid., 53

259 She suggests that transitional anger focuses on the welfare of both the victim and the wrongdoer.

260 Ibid., 54

261 Ibid., 53-54

262 Nussbaum (2016) op. cit., 262

153 victim complaining to the offender: “this is outrageous! Someone should do something about this!” and the offender agreeing: “that is outrageous! Someone really ought to do something about it.” It is consistent with the view to neglect the fact that the offender has done the outrageous thing and perhaps ought to be the one to do something about it. We might have hoped for transitional anger to expand the definition of anger, to account for anger that is about something other than revenge. Instead, what anger is “about” becomes mostly irrelevant.

Transitional anger will also be unable account for instances of anger in which neither change nor revenge is the object. For example, expressing anger may be a kind of protest, as

Bernard Boxill puts it, which is essentially “an affirmation that a victim of injury has rights.”263

Protest, according to Boxill, is not just valuable when it succeeds in bringing about change. A victim may not expect her circumstances to change, she may even expect that protest will invite additional injury. Nevertheless, protest is valuable because “unopposed injustice invites its victims to believe that they have no value and are without rights”264 Getting angry is a way of asserting that one has rights and that one deserves to be treated with a certain kind of respect.

This kind of case cannot be described in terms of transitional anger, because it is focused on the wrong of how one has been treated rather than on what can be improved in the future.

Anger as protest is not restricted to victims of injustice. People in close relationships frequently get angry at each other for being inconsiderate or unkind. It makes sense in some cases to conceive of the anger not as working toward change or desiring payback but as registering a complaint. In the example from Chapter 3, Meredith and Cristina’s anger seems to

263 Boxill, B. (1976). Self-Respect and Protest. In Philosophy and Public Affairs. 6:1, 63-64

264 Ibid.

154 assert “I don’t want to be treated this way.” My partner gets angry when I say I will be ready to walk the dog or join her for dinner in thirty minutes and then continue working on a paper for another two hours. I get angry at my sister who fails to respond when I reach out, apparently ignoring texts and calls and never taking initiative to nurture our relationship. My partner’s anger never leads her to problem solve my subpar ability (or willingness) to keep track of time, or to demand that I do better. I rarely express my anger to my sister, and certainly don’t want her to suffer. In each case, anger is a response that affirms that one is entitled to be treated in a certain way. However, recognition and acceptance of the fact that our loved ones are imperfect—and that the line between how one wants to be treated and how one is entitled to be treated is not always clear—makes it reasonable to affirm this conviction without insisting upon retribution or even change. Surely it is sometimes right to simply overlook some of these offenses, to “turn the other cheek.” Other times, it is entirely reasonable to insist upon change, or rectification. But it can also be reasonable to simply allow oneself to get angry, an assertion and embodiment of the fact that one ought to be treated with consideration and respect, even if one chooses not (or is unable) to demand that treatment.

New Possibilities Implementing these solutions also opens up new lines of inquiry and possibilities for the value of emotion. Consider the second version of the barrier assumption discussed in Chapter 4.

Outrage is presumed to be a barrier to productive dialogue and conflict resolution. We granted, for the sake of argument, that it really was such a barrier, because the other parties to the conflict shut down and found it difficult to engage with an outraged person. It is plausible that presuming warrant, paying attention to the variety of standards, and taking seriously the conflict between them would make one more likely to recognize the role of the agent who shuts down in creating

155 a barrier, rather than automatically finding fault with the emotional response. This is not only a fairer evaluation of apt, counterproductive outrage, but sheds light on how to develop a world in which such emotion is no longer counterproductive. Recognition of the fact that the person who shuts down is at least partially responsible for why the outrage is counterproductive makes salient the possibility that by cultivating the ability to engage with outraged individuals, we can decrease the extent to which outrage is a barrier to productive dialogue. So not only can these proposals help us to recognize the value that apt, counterproductive emotion already has, they may help us find ways to remove what is disadvantageous about it.

Emotional responses to oppression In this section, I consider why emotional responses to oppression are especially vulnerable to mistaken judgment. Then, I outline three ways that, given this vulnerability, my proposals may be a path not only toward properly valuing emotion, but toward dismantling some of the insidious effects of oppression.

Why emotional responses to oppression are prone to misjudgment Two reasons emotional responses to oppression are particularly vulnerable to misjudgment—misunderstandings of oppression and stereotyping—were discussed in Chapters 3 and 4. I turn now to discussing a third reason: due to the nature of oppression, emotional responses to it are especially likely to be bad by at least one evaluative standard, yielding conflicting evaluations.

156

Oppression is characterized by ubiquitous and unjust constraint.265 This characterization helps show how apt responses to oppression are sometimes at odds with well-being. To be oppressed is to suffer discrimination, deprivation, and violence. Fear, anger, bitterness, and despair are fitting responses to oppressive conditions. Because oppression is pervasive, a person responding aptly to it could be constantly fearful, angry, or bitter. On a daily basis an oppressed individual might confront violence or the threat of violence,266 microaggressions and blatant disrespect,267 and institutional discrimination and disadvantage.268 But constant fear, rage, or despair is not compatible with well-being.

In addition to being an unpleasant and unfortunate existence, it would also be flat and one-dimensional. It crowds out the other emotional responses that make up the complexity of

265 For characterizations of oppression see: Frye, Marilyn (1983). “Oppression” in The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory. The Crossing Press; Young, I. (2009). Five Face of Oppression. In George L. Henderson & Marvin Waterstone (eds.), Geographic Thought: A Praxis Perspective. New York, USA: Routledge. pp. 55-71

266 For example: RAINN (2019), Scope of the Problem: Statistics, Accessed March 30, 2019 at: https://www.rainn.org/statistics/scope-problem; Makarechi, K. (July 14, 2016). WHAT THE DATA REALLY SAYS ABOUT POLICE AND RACIAL BIAS. In Vanity Fair. Accessed March 30, 2019 at: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/07/data-police-racial-bias; Human Rights Campaign Foundation (2018). A National Epidemic: Fatal Anti-Transgender Violence in America in 2018. Accessed March 30, 2019 at: https://www.hrc.org/resources/a-national-epidemic-fatal-anti-transgender-violence-in-america-in-2018; NCADV (n.d.). Statistics. Accessed March 30, 2019 at: https://ncadv.org/statistics

267 Swim, J. K., Hyers, L. L., Cohen, L. L., & Ferguson, M. J. (2001). Everyday sexism: Evidence for its incidence, nature, and psychological impact from three daily diary studies. Journal of Social Issues, 57(1), 31-53; Lee, R., Perez, A., Boykin, M., Mendoza-Denton, R. (2019). On the prevalence of racial discrimination in the United States. In PLOS ONE. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0210698

268 Farrell, D., and Persichilli Keogh, K. (2017, May 15). The gender wage gap gets a lot of attention, but another metric is even more disconcerting. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/jpmorgan-on-gender-wealth- gap-2017-5; Levanon, A., England, P., Allison, P. (2009). Occupational Feminization and Pay: Assessing Causal Dynamics Using 1950–2000 U.S. Census Data. Social Forces, 88:2, Pages 865–89; Wallace M., Crear-Perry J., Richardson L., Tarver M., Theall K. (2017). Separate and unequal: Structural racism and infant mortality in the US. In Health Place. 45:140-144.

157 human experience.269 Despite its prevalence, there is more to a person’s life than oppressive conditions. People still form loving relationships, achieve success, suffer non-oppression-related loss and disappointment, and so on. The person who feels no anger fails to appreciate injustice, but the person who feels only anger fails to appreciate many other things.

Emotional responses to oppression are especially prone to mistaken judgment because of these evaluative conflicts. For example, one critic bolsters his claim that student outrage is inapt by emphasizing the privileges of being a Yale student.270 He is right that certain aspects of being a Yale student make gratitude, joy, and wonder fitting. Yale students have access to incredible educational and technological resources. Opportunities to engage with the arts or attend cultural events are abundant. Students presumably have their basic needs (such as food and housing) met, at least while they are on campus. A Yale student who was constantly outraged about the ways in which they are oppressed and who never felt grateful or happy about these things really would seem to be missing something. But this does not make their outrage inapt—it is a mistake to presume that the outrage of Yale students is inapt just because the students also have much about which to be grateful.

How the three proposals are part of an anti-oppression project Evaluations of emotional response are complex, and (as described above) oppressive situations are particularly rife with conflict. As I discuss earlier in this chapter, my three proposals make room for this kind of complexity. For example, by starting from a place of presumed warrant, attending to the variety of standards, and taking seriously the possibility of

269 Christopher Lebron discusses this feature of oppression in Lebron, C. (2017). The Making of Black Lives Matter: A Brief History of an Idea. New York: Oxford University Press.

270Friedersdorf, C. (2015). “The New Intolerance of Student Activism” The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/the-new-intolerance-of-student-activism-at-yale/414810/

158 conflict, one is more likely to notice what makes the Yale student outrage apt, as well as how attending to other things (e.g. the privileges of being a Yale student) make others emotional responses apt, too. Because responses to oppression are especially likely to be misjudged, proposals that lead to more accurate evaluation of emotions are significant to anti-oppression work. More accurate evaluations of emotional response may illuminate the existence and nature of oppression. The would-be critic observing the Yale students who presumes their outrage is warranted may be more likely to actually recognize the ways in which these students are oppressed. When emotional responses are taken seriously, they have the capacity to direct attention and communicate information, for example that a particular action is wrong, insulting, or part of an oppressive system. We also saw how taking conflict between evaluative standards seriously enabled Srinivasan to identify the phenomenon of affective injustice. Recognizing and understanding oppression is a necessary step in working to dismantle it.

The three proposals may also have the capacity to mitigate affective injustice. Recall that affective injustice is when victims of oppression are forced to choose between getting aptly angry and acting prudentially. Often, this anger is at odds with “acting prudentially” because dismissing the concerns of angry people (or shutting down and refusing to work with them) is perceived to be justified (or at least: dismissing the concerns of angry women and people of color is perceived to be justified). But if dismissing aptly angry people is no longer perceived to be justified, such anger should no longer be at odds with acting prudentially. With the presumption

159 of warrant, a person can express anger without being automatically dismissed, and can be reasonably confident that their concerns will be taken seriously whether they are angry or not.271

The more nuanced, complex, and essential to human life we perceive the emotions to be, the less being stereotyped as “emotional” can function to diminish a person. Though it seems unlikely we will be rid of oppression or anti-emotion bias anytime soon, shifting the way we evaluate emotion can be a small way of disrupting both.

271 There may be other cases of affective injustice—it may be counterproductive to other aims or undermine well- being somehow—these comments apply to cases in which anger is counterproductive only because it prevents the angry person from being taken seriously.

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APPENDIX

Timeline Summary272 October 28, 2015: Email sent to student body by the Intercultural Affairs Committee encouraging students to avoid certain kinds of Halloween costumes (reproduced below) October 30, 2015: Email sent to Silliman College students by Erika Christakis challenging the appropriateness of Intercultural Affairs Committee Email (reproduced below) October 30, 2015: Yale student organization hosts a party, reportedly turning away women of color and a gay man and stating “white girls only.” October 31, 2015: Open letter to Erika Christakis posted on Down Magazine website. (reproduced below) Alleges that the Christakises replied to concerns and criticism with link to “The Coddling of the American Mind” article. November 4, 2015: Open forum on institutional racism on campus, including remarks by Erika Christakis Some students characterize her comments as an effort to “defend her email” and report that she “didn’t address any of her own actions.”273 November 5, 2015: Christakis approaches student protestors and engages for several hours (Partial transcripts from film of this exchange reproduced below).

Email from The Intercultural Affairs Committee to the Yale Student Body Posted by Foundation for Individual Rights in Education on October 27, 2015. Accessed October 19, 2018 at: https://www.thefire.org/email-from-intercultural-affairs/ Dear Yale students, The end of October is quickly approaching, and along with the falling leaves and cooler nights come the Halloween celebrations on our campus and in our community. These celebrations provide opportunities for students to socialize as well as make positive contributions to our community and the New Haven community as a whole. Some upcoming events include:

272 Hudler, H. (November 6, 2015). “Yale Students Demand Resignations from Faculty Members Over Halloween Email” Accessed October 19, 2018 at: https://www.thefire.org/yale-students-demand-resignations-from-faculty- members-over-halloween-email/

273 Wang, V. and Ye, J. (November 5, 2015). Hundreds discuss race at forum. Yale Daily News. Retreived October 25, 2018 from: https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2015/11/05/hundreds-discuss-race-at-forum/

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• Haunted Hall Crawl & Costume Ball at Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History • Grove Street Cemetery Tours, Grove Street Cemetery, New Haven • YSO’s Halloween Show, Woolsey Hall However, Halloween is also unfortunately a time when the normal thoughtfulness and sensitivity of most Yale students can sometimes be forgotten and some poor decisions can be made including wearing feathered headdresses, turbans, wearing ‘war paint’ or modifying skin tone or wearing blackface or redface. These same issues and examples of cultural appropriation and/or misrepresentation are increasingly surfacing with representations of Asians and Latinos. Yale is a community that values free expression as well as inclusivity. And while students, undergraduate and graduate, definitely have a right to express themselves, we would hope that people would actively avoid those circumstances that threaten our sense of community or disrespects, alienates or ridicules segments of our population based on race, nationality, religious belief or gender expression. The culturally unaware or insensitive choices made by some members of our community in the past, have not just been directed toward a cultural group, but have impacted religious beliefs, Native American/Indigenous people, Socio-economic strata, Asians, Hispanic/Latino, Women, Muslims, etc. In many cases the student wearing the costume has not intended to offend, but their actions or lack of forethought have sent a far greater message than any apology could after the fact… There is growing national concern on campuses everywhere about these issues, and we encourage Yale students to take the time to consider their costumes and the impact it may have. So, if you are planning to dress-up for Halloween, or will be attending any social gatherings planned for the weekend, please ask yourself these questions before deciding upon your costume choice:

• Wearing a funny costume? Is the humor based on “making fun” of real people, human traits or cultures? • Wearing a historical costume? If this costume is meant to be historical, does it further misinformation or historical and cultural inaccuracies? • Wearing a ‘cultural’ costume? Does this costume reduce cultural differences to jokes or stereotypes? • Wearing a ‘religious’ costume? Does this costume mock or belittle someone’s deeply held faith tradition? • Could someone take offense with your costume and why?

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Here is a great resource for costume ideas organized by our own Community & Consent Educators (CCEs) https://www.pinterest.com/yalecces/ We are one Yale, and the actions of one affect us all…, so in whatever fashion you choose to participate in Halloween activities, we encourage everyone to be safe and thoughtful during your celebration.

Sincerely, The Intercultural Affairs Committee-

Maria Trumpler – Office of LGBTQ Resources Sharon Kugler – University Chaplain’s Office Peter Crumlish – Dwight Hall Center for Public Service & Social Justice Kelly Fayard – Native American Cultural Center Omer Bajwa – University Chaplain’s Office Risë Nelson – Afro American Cultural Center Leah Cohen – Joseph Slivka Center for Jewish Life Melanie Boyd – Office of Gender and Campus Culture Eileen Galvez – La Casa Cultural Brian Tompkins – Yale Athletics Saveena Dhall – Asian American Cultural Center Anne Kuhlman – Office of International Students & Scholars Burgwell Howard – Yale Dean of the College Office/Office of Student Life

Email from Associate Master Erika Christakis to Silliman College Students Posted by Foundation for Individual Rights in Education on October 30, 2015. Accessed October 19, 2018 at: https://www.thefire.org/email-from-erika-christakis-dressing-yourselves-email-to- silliman-college-yale-students-on-halloween-costumes/ Dear Sillimanders: Nicholas and I have heard from a number of students who were frustrated by the mass email sent to the student body about appropriate Halloween-wear. I’ve always found Halloween an interesting embodiment of more general adult worries about young people. As some of you may

163 be aware, I teach a class on “The Concept of the Problem Child,” and I was speaking with some of my students yesterday about the ways in which Halloween – traditionally a day of subversion for children and young people – is also an occasion for adults to exert their control. When I was young, adults were freaked out by the specter of Halloween candy poisoned by lunatics, or spiked with razor blades (despite the absence of a single recorded case of such an event). Now, we’ve grown to fear the sugary candy itself. And this year, we seem afraid that college students are unable to decide how to dress themselves on Halloween. I don’t wish to trivialize genuine concerns about cultural and personal representation, and other challenges to our lived experience in a plural community. I know that many decent people have proposed guidelines on Halloween costumes from a spirit of avoiding hurt and offense. I laud those goals, in theory, as most of us do. But in practice, I wonder if we should reflect more transparently, as a community, on the consequences of an institutional (which is to say: bureaucratic and administrative) exercise of implied control over college students. It seems to me that we can have this discussion of costumes on many levels: we can talk about complex issues of identify, free speech, cultural appropriation, and virtue “signalling.” But I wanted to share my thoughts with you from a totally different angle, as an educator concerned with the developmental stages of childhood and young adulthood. As a former preschool teacher, for example, it is hard for me to give credence to a claim that there is something objectionably “appropriative” about a blonde-haired child’s wanting to be Mulan for a day. Pretend play is the foundation of most cognitive tasks, and it seems to me that we want to be in the business of encouraging the exercise of imagination, not constraining it. I suppose we could agree that there is a difference between fantasizing about an individual character vs. appropriating a culture, wholesale, the latter of which could be seen as (tacky)(offensive)(jejeune)(hurtful), take your pick. But, then, I wonder what is the statute of limitations on dreaming of dressing as Tiana the Frog Princess if you aren’t a black girl from New Orleans? Is it okay if you are eight, but not 18? I don’t know the answer to these questions; they seem unanswerable. Or at the least, they put us on slippery terrain that I, for one, prefer not to cross. Which is my point. I don’t, actually, trust myself to foist my Halloweenish standards and motives on others. I can’t defend them anymore than you could defend yours. Why do we dress up on Halloween, anyway? Should we start explaining that too? I’ve always been a good mimic and I enjoy accents. I love to travel, too, and have been to every continent but Antarctica. When I lived in Bangladesh, I bought a sari because it was beautiful, even though I looked stupid in it and never wore it once. Am I fetishizing and appropriating others’ cultural experiences? Probably. But I really, really like them too. Even if we could agree on how to avoid offense – and I’ll note that no one around campus seems overly concerned about the offense taken by religiously conservative folks to skin-revealing costumes – I wonder, and I am not trying to be provocative: Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious… a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive? American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for

164 a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience; increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition. And the censure and prohibition come from above, not from yourselves! Are we all okay with this transfer of power? Have we lost faith in young people’s capacity – in your capacity – to exercise self-censure, through social norming, and also in your capacity to ignore or reject things that trouble you? We tend to view this shift from individual to institutional agency as a tradeoff between libertarian vs. liberal values (“liberal” in the American, not European sense of the word). Nicholas says, if you don’t like a costume someone is wearing, look away, or tell them you are offended. Talk to each other. Free speech and the ability to tolerate offence are the hallmarks of a free and open society. But – again, speaking as a child development specialist – I think there might be something missing in our discourse about the exercise of free speech (including how we dress ourselves) on campus, and it is this: What does this debate about Halloween costumes say about our view of young adults, of their strength and judgment? In other words: Whose business is it to control the forms of costumes of young people? It’s not mine, I know that.

Happy Halloween. Yours sincerely, Erika

Open Letter to Associate Master Erika Christakis from Yale students, staff, faculty, and alumni (authored by student Ryan Wilson) Posted by Ryan Wilson to Down Magazine (online) October 31, 2015, accessed October 19, 2018 at: http://downatyale.com/post.php?id=430

In anticipation of the Halloween weekend soon to arrive at Yale, an email was sent out by Dean Burgwell Howard and the Intercultural Affairs Committee in which they implored the Yale body to “avoid those circumstances that threaten our sense of community or disrespects, alienates or ridicules segments of our population based on race, nationality, religious belief or gender expression.” The email also encouraged Yale students to “take the time to consider their costumes and the impact it may have.” What was simply a request from Yale’s Intercultural Affairs Committee for students to reconsider culturally insensitive costumes was met with criticism when an email was sent out to the students of Silliman College by the Associate Master, Erika Christakis. She wrote her email,

165 as she says, in response to “students who were frustrated by the mass email sent to the student body about appropriate Halloween-wear.”

Associate Master Erika Christakis, In your email, you defend the right to wear racist or marginalizing costumes as free speech and accuse the Intercultural Affairs Committee of imposing bureaucratic restrictions on the student body. You deem the call for sensitivity “censure” — one which you say comes “from above”, not from the students, as if the repeated requests of many students of color do not count. To equate a suggestion of the IAC, a committee created to challenge bias and promote cultural awareness, respect, and appreciation on campus, with an “institutional exercise of implied control over college students” further erases the voices of the students they stand to protect. The contents of your email were jarring and disheartening. Your email equates old traditions of using harmful stereotypes and tropes to further degrade marginalized people, to preschoolers playing make believe. This both trivializes the harm done by these tropes and infantilizes the student body to which the request was made. You fail to distinguish the difference between cosplaying fictional characters and misrepresenting actual groups of people. In your email, you ask students to “look away” if costumes are offensive, as if the degradation of our cultures and people, and the violence that grows out of it is something that we can ignore. We were told to meet the offensive parties head on, without suggesting any modes or means to facilitate these discussions to promote understanding. Giving “room” for students to be “obnoxious” or “offensive”, as you suggest, is only inviting ridicule and violence onto ourselves and our communities, and ultimately comes at the expense of room in which marginalized students can feel safe. These discussions are not new, and have been happening nationally. To ask marginalized students to throw away their enjoyment of a holiday, in order to expend emotional, mental, and physical energy to explain why something is offensive, is — offensive. In the age of the internet, resources can easily be found to explain the history and consequences of these actions. The role of marginalized people on campus is not, and should not be, to constantly educate our peers if they ignore the many opportunities offered — like the one provided by the Intercultural Affairs Committee’s email — to self-explore and learn. After receiving responses from students and alumni through both social media and email, you responded to critics of your email with a link to the Atlantic Magazine article, “The Coddling of the American Mind.” Not only are you calling our calls to be respected as human beings and not costumes, coddling, but you use an article that doesn’t consider the fact that marginalized people largely do not have the protected upbringings the authors describe. We are not asking to be coddled. The real coddling is telling the privileged majority on campus that they do not have to engage with the brutal pasts that are a part of the costumes they seek to wear. We, however, simply ask that our existences not be invalidated on campus. This is us asking for basic respect of our cultures and our livelihoods.

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To be a student of color on Yale’s campus is to exist in a space that was not created for you. From the Eurocentric courses, to the lack of diversity in the faculty, to the names of slave owners and traders that adorn most of the buildings on campus — all are reminders that Yale’s history is one of exclusion. An exclusion that was based on the same stereotypes and incorrect beliefs that students now seek to wear as costumes. Stereotypes that many students still face to this day when navigating the university. The purpose of blackface, yellowface, and practices like these were meant to alienate, denigrate, and to portray people of color as something inferior and unwelcome in society. To see that replicated on college campuses only reinforces the idea that this is a space in which we do not belong.

Sincerely, Concerned Yale Students, Alumni, Family, Faculty, and Staff

Partial Transcript from TheAsianRepublican Video of Nicholas Christakis Confrontation with Students Video posted by TheAsianRepublican on September 20, 2016, accessed October 19th, 2018 at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiMVx2C5_Wg

3:01: Michaela: In this class that I took with you, you expressed issues about how, you showed scientific studies about how racism affects the Black body in its physological [sic] physiological form. [inaudible response from crowd] Yes, yeah, so I’m saying that these studies that you have cited which seem, that you seem to not, not care about that you and your wife seem to have kind of dismissed in the course of events of the past couple weeks, that you’ve gone to the discussions with students but largely have not listened to us. That has been the biggest thing that I’ve heard. That has been my biggest reaction from this email is that you’re not listening. You’ve heard us say things and both of you have gotten incredibly defensive. You’re retweeting things saying Obama thinks we’re coddling the American mind, and you retweet it from the Silliman account, as if the, I want that information to be associated with me. I came to Silliman, I moved in here my freshman year and it became my home. I give tours every day—not ev—every week, and have to stand here in the courtyard and say this is my home, I live up there, my Master’s there, my Dean, I love my college. And I can’t say that anymore, because its not a home anymore. It is no longer a safe space for me and I find that incredibly depressing for the freshmen who are here and who don’t know any better, who don’t know that this was once a space where I was proud to, what I was proud to be a part of because it was a loving community. Because I feel that in your role as Master and Associate Master after sending that email and after not having an appropriate response that our opinion has been dismissed. That you guys have not said ‘I hear you. I hear that you are hurting and I am sorry that I have caused you to feel pain.’ I have not

167 heard that from you and I’ve not heard that from your wife. And that it what I want to hear, I don’t want to hear any more defensive terms because it’s not, it’s not fair to us.” [Crowd snapping, inaudible comments] Christakis: “Thank you, Michaela. Thank you. I’m um, I’m uh, I’ll just say that um it’s interesting to me that even though we had all that time together and you took the class with me, you still didn’t form From crowd: Speak up! Christakis: [Engages with crowd about volume] …Please stop misjudging anything I do, okay? ‘Cause it’s a little bit, I’m talking her, now, right? [To Michaela] So as I was telling you, [To crowd behind him] I’ll speak up a little so I won’t, but I won’t yell at her. Is that fair? [Crowd responds] Okay, alright. [To Michaela] So what I wanted to tell you, Michaela, is that you have spent time with me, you’ve been in class with me, you had all those experiences that you described, and whats amazing to me is despite all of that, you weren’t able to form an opinion of me as a human being and what my beliefs are [video repeats “weren’t able to form an opinion of me as a human being and what my beliefs are] and to see the extent to which they’re in agreement with your beliefs. That you, you seem to think that somehow I don’t agree with the content of your beliefs, and that’s not what’s happening from my perspective. From my perspective, Michaela: I don’t see you as agreeing… Lisa [with raised hand] [Inaudible comments from Christakis and crowd]: Can, can I say something? Can I just interject really quickly? The moral of Michaela’s comment just now, the moral of the story is that she wants an apology. Yet you respond not with an apology. [Christakis interrupting] That’s, that’s, that’s, that’s my-I’m just saying are you gonna, are you gonna, can I finish, are you going to address the heart of her comment? That’s all I want. Are you gonna give an apology? Are you gonna say that you’re hearing us? Are you gonna then go to the lengths that she wants you to go to which to me don’t seem very far but still seem, we’re not making a judgment on ‘Master Christakis is inherently,’ we just want an acknowledgment of hurt, and we have yet to get that, which Michaela just said [inaudible] so my question is are you going to say that? Or are you not? ‘Cause then I could just leave if you’re not gonna say that ‘cause I’ve heard from—I was at the discussion, I’m gonna be there on Sunday, and I’m gonna listen, but like what I’m listening for I’ve not yet heard, so I’m just asking are you gonna provide that or are you not gonna provide that? Christakis: [Interrupting] I have to think about the, this idea for a moment, so you Lisa: [Interrupting] The idea of apologizing? Christakis: Yes, because let me ask you this if I ask you to apologize right now for delaying me from all my other obligations to all my other students [Crowd responds]

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Christakis: I’m just saying that if you ask for an apology, that doesn’t mean that the other person, you know [snaps fingers] instantly has to say yes. [Inaudible comments from crowd] Lisa: Okay, ok, ok, so— Christakis: Because the person has to think about what it is that you’re asking means. Lisa: Okay so then my question is what is the, okay— Christakis: For what, tell me what it is— Lisa: For, Okay, if I am in the courtyard playing games, right, and I’m kicking my soccer ball, you happen to be walking in the path, I kick the soccer ball, I break your nose, right, isn’t it— you are experiencing pain right now, physical pain. It is in, I need to apologize because I have caused you pain— Christakis: [Interrupting] That’s a good argument, that’s a good argument— Lisa: Okay, so that’s the thing, that’s the thing, my logical question, then, to your question is, is, what is the role of an apology, right? An apology is in order when someone has been hurt, whether you inflicted that pain accidentally or on purpose, right, so like I think that we’re not debating like, whether, it shouldn’t be a question as to whether you owe us an apology, I mean even if you were, even if you were like a stellar human being, right, you like did everything right, but then one day you fucked up, that one time fuckin up is enough to apologize to the person that you hurt. We’re not making a larger judgment about who you are and your character and what you believe and what your beliefs you own, you can hold the belief and go back on that belief, alright, that doesn’t mean that like you less-hold that belief, you see what I’m saying? So like it’s not— Christakis: I do Lisa: Okay, perfect, so then that means that you owe us an apology because you hurt us regardless of what you hold similar views or whether you intended to or like ‘I didn’t mean it’ or like ‘I’m sorry, I misspoke I like misworded the email’ that is irrelevant what we want now is a response and a moving forward not “Oh I meant this, no, oh like I don’t think you understand me” like okay it doesn’t matter if I understand you. The net effect is the— Christakis: It doesn’t matter if you understand me? Lisa: Okay, fine— Christakis: You had me until there— Lisa: We can just cut that out then— [Crowd and Christakis muffled response]

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Lisa: See then I just made a mistake and I’m sorry for saying that and [Crowd claps and responds, Lisa and Christakis inaudible] Lisa: And like that’s all we’re asking here from— Christakis: First of all, what’s your name? Lisa: Lisa, and— Christakis: [reaches for handshake] I’m Nicholas Lisa: And I have had dinner with you— Christakis: Good Lisa: I’ve seen you around— Christakis: Okay Lisa: I’m glad we can meet again— Christakis: Okay, so Lisa and Michaela. Alright. Um. So I think what I heard you said was that whether we meant it or not, and regardless of what we said, it hurt um, I don’t want this to come across as the wrong way, but it hurt your feelings, and many people’s feelings— Lisa: Okay, so— Christakis: But, if you just, you can argue the word, I don’t wanna offend you by suggesting the wrong word, I know it’s more than your [mimes quotation marks] “feelings” okay, I understand so what we said, uh, uh, whether we intended it or not and regardless of the content hurt your feelings, and you would like me to apologize for hurting your feelings. Is that right? Someone in the crowd: No, it’s content of her feelings— Lisa: Yes, I still think that the phrase “hurt feelings” is— Christakis: Okay— Lisa: is— Christakis: Okay tell me the phrase that you want me to use and I’ll use it Lisa: I don’t know— [Jumbled response from crowd] Lisa: —was an expression of racism. Christakis: No no, I won’t agree to say that— Lisa: was an affront to a group— Christakis: I won’t agree the statement was racist, I won’t agree the—

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[Crowd response] Christakis: No no, hold on, hold on— [Crowd Response] Lisa: You can say hurt feelings but I want you to recognize that it goes deeper than feelings— Christakis: I do, but— Lisa: It is an affront to a group of people— Christakis: okay, I recognize that but— Lisa: Okay, great, so then that’s what I want you to say Christakis: So I— Lisa: If you understand that then you can put it in your own words and then I— Christakis: So you want me to say that I apologize for hurting your feelings [inaudible] Christakis: I’m looking at her and I’m listening very carefully and, and it goes deeper than that, and I know it’s deeper than that— Lisa: [crying] So then apologize! Christakis: [yelling] I want to make sure— Lisa: I don’t understand, like, what is the issue? [Inaudible crowd response, Christakis engaging with crowd Lisa: I’m sorry to break out like this but like, literally, okay, can I ask you: what is so hard for you to say those words? What is holding you back form that? Like, I don’t understand, do you need to know what you’re apologizing for? Is that what your inherent discomfort with saying these words is? Is it that you’re losing face? Is it that you’re losing ground— Christiakis: No, it’s not that— Lisa: Is it that your authority is lessened— Christakis: It’s none of those things— Lisa: Then I don’t understand why we’re still standing here and having this one-on-one conversation right now. So then what’s the problem? Let me know the problem. Christakis: First of all, I would like to apologize for hurting your feelings. Okay? Lisa: Okay

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Christakis: And you allowed me to use that expression without it being seen as trivializing your experience. Lisa: Okay Christakis: So I also, having apologized for hurting your feelings, in addition I will acknowledge that that comes from a very deep and legitimate source of [video repeats “will acknowledge that that comes from a very deep and legitimate source of] complaint. I understand. I understand, to the extent that I can, some of the struggles that many of you have had. Crowd: Do you though? Crowd: No you don’t Lisa: Okay, okay let him, just let him— [Inaudible crowd] Christakis: I said to the extent that I can, so you can, to the extent that I can, alright, so if I cannot, if its, okay, if I cannot then, Crowd: let us define our own experiences, let us tell you if you’re being racist— Christakis: No no, hold on one second— Crowd: That is actually how it works, okay Christakis: So I have a vision of us as people, as human beings, that actually privileges our common humanity, that is interested not in what is different among us but what is the same, okay, and so we all have that capacity, I believe— Lisa: Okay, so you’re saying that— Christakis: Let me finish one sentence. I believe even though I have a different life experience than you, even though I have a different skin color and gender than you, I believe there are parts of your experience that I can understand as a human being. [Responses from crowd] Christakis: Hold on! Let’s—one idea at a time, one idea at a time. If you want to just, uh, look for reasons to disresp—to think ill of me—you are free to do so. But if you’d like to—[crowd response]—if you want to hear what I have to say, and you want to act in a way that is like, people who are interested in a conversation, then let me express as a human being one idea at a time. Don’t act like a mob that’s trying to get me to say different things. Like I was just saying, I have a visions of ourselves that unites our common humanity, so I believe even though I’m not like you, in the sense of my superficial appearance, that I can sit down and talk to you and understand, understand your predicament, but I can listen to you—if that’s not true, if you deny that, then what is the reason that you ask to be heard? By me or anyone else?

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Partial Transcript from TheFIREorg Video of Nicholas Christakis Confrontation with Students Video posted by TheFIREorg on November 6, 2015. Accessed October 19, 2018 at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IEFD_JVYd0

0:14: Student: As your position as master, it is your job to create a place of comfort and home for the students that live in Silliman. Christakis: I hear you. Student: You have not done that. By sending out that email, that goes against your position as master. Do you understand that? Christakis: No, I don’t agree with that. Student: [Yelling.] Then why the fuck did you accept the position? Christakis: Because I have a di— Student: Who the fuck hired you? Christakis: I have a different vision than you. Student: Then step down! If that is what you think about being a master, then you should step down. It is not about creating an intellectual space! It is not! Do you understand that? It’s about creating a home here! You are not doing that. You’re going against that. Student in crowd: You’re supposed to be our advocate! Student: You should [inaudible] be at the event last night when you hear [inaudible] say that she didn’t know how to create a safe space for her freshmen at Silliman! How do you explain that? If freshmen come here, they think this is what Yale is? Do you hear that? They’re gonna leave! They’re gonna transfer because you are a poor steward of the community. Student: You should not sleep at night. You are disgusting.

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