Lily Foy- Denying Access Based on Reason

In “Reason, Gender, and Morality in the History of Philosophy,” Genevieve Lloyd refers to binary oppositions such as reason/emotion, masculine/feminine, and active/passive very explicitly. These contrasts, in fact, are at the heart of her article.Beginning with Plato and the Greeks, Lloyd describes that reason has always been thought of as an escape from passion and pleasures. Through reason and order, men were able to access the public domain, including political activities, moral debates, etc. Women were denied access to these parts of society because they lacked the capacity for reason, acting instead upon emotion and less logically based reasoning systems. Femininity was associated with everything opposite of reason (passive, formless, unbound, vague, etc.), and Philo and Plato even went so far as to say that the feminine was actually a hindrance to reaching a virtuous life. That is not to say necessarily that the female is bad, but that in order to achieve a virtuous life, even females must put aside the feminine in favor of “masculine traits that mark the noble affections” (Lloyd 495). For men, however, it is only a matter of focusing on their already natural and present traits. This juxtaposition has continued into almost every gender comparison and debate since then; however, Lloyd argues that Descartes’ description of reason as a method or practice of thinking as opposed to a natural masculine trait created the opportunity for a different narrative of male and female. Because women were mostly educated in the home, they were never exposed to the public teachings that most boys learned. Women became the protectors of “the soft and sensuous” so that men could attain reason; instead of the female being seen as lesser, it was now complementary, even though the typical gender characteristics (male-reasonable, female-emotional) were still in place.