Autonomy and Oppresive Socialization Benson

Florida State University Department of Philosophy
Autonomy and Oppressive Socialization

Author(s): Paul Benson
Source: Social Theory and Practice, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Fall 1991), pp. 385-408
Published by: Florida State University Department of Philosophy
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23557430
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Autonomy and Oppressive Socialization
Most accounts of autonomy currently hold that autonomous agen

cy involves the ability to regulate one's actions through critical
reflection on one's motives. One of the many appeals of thinking
about autonomy in these terms is that it seems to offer a plausible
response to a familiar argument for skepticism about autonomy.
The skeptic notes the extensive contribution that socializing forces
make to our desires, values, and decisions. The skeptic then argues
that, since we typically cannot control the influence that socializa
tion exerts upon us, our actions can never genuinely be our own in
the manner that autonomy requires. But this conclusion may not
follow if we can make our actions our own in the relevant sense
by acting upon critical assessments of our motives, where those
assessments are effective independently of socializing forces. This
reply to the skeptic grants that socialization can have a large part
in the explanation of our conduct, but contends that autonomy is
possible nonetheless if critical reflection has the right sort of role
in our motivation.
There is a serious problem with this reply, however. Certain
forms of socialization are oppressive and clearly lessen autonomy.
In some prominent cases, the general means by which oppressive
socialization operates are no different than those through which
benign socialization takes effect. This indicates that the role of
critical reflection in the wills of agents whose autonomy is
diminished could be largely the same as its role in the wills of those
who enjoy greater autonomy. If this is true, then the sensitivity of
conduct to critical reflection cannot be the sole determinant of
autonomy.
I will begin to develop this argument below by describing an
example of the pertinent sort of oppressive socialization. The main
point of my consideration of this example will not be to develop
Copyright 1991 by Social Theory and Practice, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Fall 1991)
385
386 Social Theory and Practice
an explanation of why the socialization involved is oppressive.1

Instead, I will attend to one way in which this particular sort of
socialization can diminish autonomy and then use this case to
assess some current theories of autonomy. I will argue that these
views focus in such a way on the role that critical reflection has in
the process whereby agents are motivated to act that the theories
neglect an important constraint on the content of autonomous
agents' critical powers.
My hope is that the view of autonomy that begins to emerge
from this discussion allows an explanation of the autonomy
inhibiting effects of some socialization while sustaining the
nonskeptical conclusion that a good deal of our socialization,
though it influences us profoundly, need not interfere with
autonomy.
1.
Feminine gender socialization in our society attaches great sig

nificance to women's physical appearance. Becoming a thorough
ly feminine woman involves near constant effort to measure up to
complicated and ever-changing standards governing one's looks.
These standards are organized by the goal of making women
pleasing and exciting visual objects for men.^
One of the messages most commonly conveyed in the normal
course of feminization is that women's physical appearance is
naturally deficient. A woman must "fix herself up," "do something
about herself," or (as one recent advertising campaign puts it)
"sculpt herself." Young girls are continually instructed to measure
their looks against standards they have a chance of attaining only
after prolonged efforts at plucking, painting, toning, tanning,
starving, and meticulously scrutinizing their bodies. One ad tells
women that they have nothing to lose in using certain hair care
products but their imperfections. Another ad promises that certain
cosmetics will help a woman be herself "only better, much better."
Increasingly, fashion advertising presents tabulated results of
clinical tests purportedly showing that various beauty products are
vital to a woman's bodily health. Sandra Bartky captures this
Autonomy and Oppressive Socialization 387
aspect of feminine socialization well when she writes, "The

fashion-beauty complex produces in woman an estrangement from
her bodily being. On the one hand, I am it and am scarcely allowed
to be anything else; on the other hand, I must exist perpetually at
a distance from my physical self, fixed at this distance in a
permanent posture of disapproval." "All the projections of the
fashion-beauty complex have this in common: they are images of
what I am not."3
The message that women would do well to enlist the aid of the
fashion-beauty industry in their endless struggle against their
natural defects is accompanied by the sober reminder that women
whose looks never measure up very well or who never try hard to
sculpt themselves deserve to be condemned. They are lazy or
selfish or ignorant or mentally or physically ill. Worse still, they
might be mannish, not real women at all. Thus, many women are
brought up to believe that constructing a feminine appearance is
indispensable to their personal worth. They are taught that securing
attractiveness in men's eyes is a prerequisite for social success,
physical health, stable identity-formation, and meaningful
self-expression.4
Two features of the socialization of feminine appearance
especially contribute to the kind of limitation on autonomy that
concerns me here. First, like most sorts of socialization that are
exceptionally powerful, this element of feminine socialization is
directed at having women internalize its standards. The more fully
its lessons are integrated into a woman's conception of her personal
value, the better. This is why the socialization of feminine
appearance does not rely solely upon coercion for its effectiveness.
To be sure, its success results in part from the coercive measures
that operate in its behalf. Women learn that their prospects for
satisfying their basic interests in meaningful work, material
security, social acceptance, and so forth can be expected to suffer
dramatically if they do not achieve enough success at maintaining
themselves as desirable sights for men's eyes. I do not want to
minimize the adverse impact that the coercive implements of
feminine socialization have on many women's autonomy. But the
degree of internalization at which this socialization aims
contributes to a more subtle and oft neglected, yet no less dire,

effect on some women's ability to act autonomously.
Women who take on the task of sculpting a suitably feminine
appearance as a result of coercive pressures want to be pleasing
visual objects for men. They believe that, on the whole, it is
reasonable for them to want this because of the many difficulties
they would face if they did not. In this case women regard the
considerations that motivate their desire to "fix themselves up" as
conditions that others have manipulatively imposed upon them.
They may feel satisfied with their response to these perceived
threats, but they do not feel satisfied with the coercive situation
that prompts their response. They resent having to sculpt
themselves from the standpoint of male gratification just in order
to protect their ability to satisfy a number of their fundamental
human interests.
Quite a few normally socialized women, however, want to
maintain feminine appearances for reasons that they do not regard
as issuing from circumstances that are in any way hostile to their
primary interests. Feminine socialization has insinuated its lessons
into their most stable views of what they are and ought to be as
persons. These women embrace the requirements of feminine
beauty as integral components of their major plans and projects.
They accept that women ought to sculpt themselves as feminine
objects, believing this to be a constitutive part of their self
realization as women. In some instances, the very things that other
women perceive as coercively enforcing standards of feminine
appearance the women I am now describing will take as evidence
that confirms their own conceptions of their value as women.5
(This is one reason why it is often so difficult to tell whether
someone's conformity is produced through coercion or not.)
The internalization of feminine socialization accounts for a not
inconsequential proportion of its effectiveness. Coupled with a
second feature of feminization, it permits many women to suffer
diminished autonomy. This second feature consists in the fact that
what feminine socialization aims to instruct women about the value
of their appearance is untrue. It is not true that women who deny
feminine looks preeminent importance are lazy or selfish or
unhealthy or neurotic or not real women. It is not true that feminine
appearance is a necessary ingredient of a woman's personal worth.

Indeed, as I noted above, a woman's appearance can have a great
effect on her ability to pursue her basic social, personal, and
economic interests. But that merely reflects the coercive
circumstances that most women face as a result of current gender
training's pervasiveness. It does not provide evidence that being a
sight for male delectation really ought to matter to women on
independent grounds.
The socialization of feminine appearance is oppressive not only
because many women are motivated to comply due to coercive
conditions, but also because it frequently yields compliance by
systematically leading women to internalize false construals of
their personal value and, in consequence, to misconstrue many of
the reasons there are for them to act. In the latter cases no less than
those involving coercion, feminine socialization operates to impair
autonomy. This essay will seek an account of why this sort of case
involves diminished autonomy. At this juncture, however, it may
be worthwhile just to reflect seriously on the thought that it does
involve reduced autonomy.
Consider the eighteen-year-old college student who excels in
her studies, is well liked by her many friends and acquaintances,
leads an active, challenging life, yet who regularly feels bad about
herself because she does not have "the right look." She has those
familiar sorts of "imperfection" that others repeatedly have called
to her attention from an early age. Her hair has never been quite
curly or straight enough; her make-up is always too heavy or too
light; her body is never just soft or firm enough; she has never been
sure what the strong points of her appearance were, so she never
has known what styles of clothing would capitalize on them.
Periodically, she has tried not to care so much about all of this, but
in each instance something arose to remind her that others attach
significant value to a woman's appearance and that, as a woman,
she would feel much happier about herself if she could sculpt her
appearance more successfully. So, on top of everything else she
does, she expends a great deal of time and money trying to
straighten or curl her hair, to refine her cosmetic technique, to
harden or soften her body, and so on, as well as trying to keep up
with all of the latest products, routines, and tricks that might help
her finally to attain more success at these tasks.
As I have imagined this young woman, she is bright, sensitive,
earnest, and active. But she is usually frustrated with and
disapproving of herself—and sometimes disgusted by
herself—because she wants her body to appear the way most other
people she knows wish it to appear. She is convinced that this is a
very important aim for a woman to have because nearly everything
in her upbringing and adolescent experience has affirmed its value.
And her upbringing was in no way deprived, according to
prevailing social standards. She received close personal attention
from family and peers and found emotional and material
encouragement for many of her endeavors. However, if that
upbringing reliably led her gravely to misunderstand the place of
feminine appearance in her value as a person, and systematically
prevented her from correcting that misunderstanding, then surely
the motives and judgments that occasion her persistent
dissatisfaction with herself are less than fully her own. The actions
she performs to "fix herself up" are not motivated autonomously.6
Two qualifications help to shore up the plausibility of this claim
about reduced autonomy. First, I am using "autonomy" to
designate a feature of the conditions under which an agent is moved
to perform a particular action. (I am not addressing that sort of
autonomy which attaches only to extended periods of agents'
lives.) Thus, the claim that normal feminine socialization affects
some women's attitudes toward themselves in a manner which
inhibits the autonomy of some of their actions is compatible with
the claim that these women are autonomously moved to do many
of the other things they do. The undeniable autonomy most of these
women enjoy with regard to much of their conduct does not count
against the assertion that part of their socialization has markedly
impaired their autonomy with respect to other actions.
Second, the claim about the autonomy-inhibiting effects that
normal feminization has for some women coheres with the widely
admitted view that being autonomously motivated to perform a
certain action is a necessary condition of one's being morally
responsible for performing it. In the kind of case I have described,
a woman whose socialization has impaired the autonomy of certain
of her actions will also have sufficient grounds for being excused
from full liability to moral criticism for those actions.
I now turn to an assessment of ways in which some recent
accounts of autonomy might attempt to understand the type of
curtailed autonomy I have sketched.
The type of autonomy-diminishing socialization I have described

indicates why any fairly simple hierarchical account of autonomy
is inadequate. Consider, for instance, Harry Frankfurt's analysis of
free agency.7 Frankfurt holds that a person's actions are free, or
autonomous, when she acts on a first-order desire that she wants
(at a higher level) to act on and when she acts on that desire because
she wants to. That is, autonomous agents are those whose highest
order volitions determine which first-order desires effectively
move them to act. (Frankfurt explains why this does not mean that
free agents have their first-order volitions only because of their
highest-order volitions.) For Frankfurt, although higher-order
desires are the sole vehicle of autonomous agents' identification
with their actions, they are nothing more than desires. They are
distinctive entirely because of the special class of objects they take,
because of their position in the structure of an agent's will.
However, since the socialization of feminine appearance is most
effective when norms of femininity are securely internalized in
women's attitudes toward themselves, women's highest-order
desires can fall under its sway just as completely as can first-order
desires. I have noted that a thoroughly feminized woman's desire
to be an appealing sight for men need not motivate her
independently of her higher-order wants. She has been taught to
want to want this, and, because she has incorporated this
instruction into her own self-conception, she wants to look
attractive (partly) because she wants that desire to motivate her
behavior. As many critics now have pointed out, Frankfurt's view
cannot explain cases in which agents' higher-order identification
with their ground-floor will is itself at the service of forces that
impair their autonomy.
Two attempts recently have been made to remedy this

shortcoming without abandoning the idea that autonomy depends
upon higher-order determination of first-order volitions. One is
Eleonore Stump's proposal that a hierarchical account should
modify Frankfurt's description of second-order volitions by
recognizing the role of intellect in the will.8 According to Stump,
second-order volitions are products of reasoning which represents
the relevant first-order desires (under some description) "... as the
good to be pursued. . . ."9 Stump maintains that linking second
order volitions to the intellect's reflection on the will ensures that
the resultant identification eludes autonomy-diminishing
influences. She believes that our reasoning faculty is essential to
us as persons and infers from this that, even when the intellect does
not function rationally (in a normative sense) or the agent is not
conscious of its functioning, actions motivated by higher-order
intellectual reflection must be autonomous.
Stump's account does not handle the pertinent cases of
oppressive socialization much better than Frankfurt's view does.
If, as Stump says, "... an agent's intellect may formulate a reason
for an action in a manner that is hasty, thoughtless, ill-informed,
invalid, or in any other way irrational," then second-order desires
issuing from the intellect can serve to undercut autonomy nearly
as easily as any second-order desires can. Stump's view is too
generous. It permits autonomy even when an agent's intellect is
reciting all of the socially maintained stories about the importance
of feminine attractiveness to a woman's health, moral character,
and self-esteem.
John Christman sets out a way of supplementing hierarchical
analyses of autonomy that looks more promising.11 He appreciates
the problem that critical reflection can become the vehicle of
assaults on autonomy and, following Gerald Dworkin, contends
that higher-order identification suffices for autonomy only when
it is "procedurally independent." (Dworkin requires that
identification must not be ". . . itself influenced in ways which
make the process of identification in some way alien to the
individual.") Christman characterizes procedural independence
negatively, as the absence of "illegitimate external influences"
(IEIs) on an agent's reflective identification with certain first-order

volitions. He tentatively describes IEIs as follows.
First, IEIs are external in that they originate outside the agent
and interfere with normal cognitive processes of reflection.13
Second, IEIs are illegitimate in that, upon becoming aware of their
influence, an agent would be led to revise his identifications.14 So
Christman proposes, in effect, that socializing forces count as
autonomy-inhibiting IEIs when they disrupt persons' normal
processes of reflection in such a way that, were the persons aware
of these influences, they would be moved to modify their
higher-order identifications.
The externality condition is troubling because it seems to trap
us in a dilemma. The dilemma arises when we consider what
"normal cognitive processes" might mean. If normal processes are
ones which characteristically transpire in the cognition of most
ordinary human adults, then the condition is too weak. Autonomy
inhibiting influences on reflection need not be external to normal
cognitive processes in this sense, for oppressive forms of
socialization influence some of the cognitive processes of a great
many ordinary adults. The pervasiveness of forms of gender
socialization that erode autonomy confirms this. On the other hand,
the most plausible strengthened reading of "normal processes" will
be question-begging. Saying that normal processes of
identification are those that occur in the absence of significant
external interference is unhelpful, for it was "external interference"
that needed interpretation in the first place.
This points to a deeper circularity in the externality condition.
In this context, "normal processes of reflection" can only mean
those liable to yield the higher-order identifications of autonomous
agents. No other standard of normalcy pertains here. This is
confirmed by the fact that, given ordinary uses of "external,"
socializing forces which support and augment our autonomy
influence our reflective identifications no less externally than do
oppressive forces. Hence the explanatory burden of Christman's
account of procedural independence falls on the illegitimacy
condition.13
The difficulty with the proposed counterfactual interpretation of
illegitimate influences is that it, too, seems to yield intuitively
acceptable results only when it is question-begging. For instance,

a woman who oppressively conceives of her identity in terms of
the male interests she seeks to gratify may not revise her
identification with her desire to look femininely attractive upon
becoming aware that this identification is primarily the product of
social training which implicitly functions to enhance men's power
over women. She has become accustomed to thinking of herself
from an internalized male point of view, so she may be unaffected
by the knowledge that her endorsement of her desire to have a
feminine appearance was the product of socialization in a
male-dominated society. A woman could be so unsure about her
own value apart from men's attitudes toward her that she would be
content to know that, for the most part, the pressure of male
interests led her to be this way. Put slightly differently, a woman
who has learned from her earliest years to gauge her personal value
largely according to men's reactions to her can acquire the further
belief that she came to understand her personal worth in those
terms as a result of socialization which serves men's interests and
can preserve the coherence of her self-conception without having
to modify her identification with male-oriented motives. If it were
true that women ought to be objects for men's use, then it could be
reasonable to believe that women should come to appreciate that
very fact through the influence of social arrangements useful to
men.
The problem that this case poses for Christman's analysis of

illegitimate influences is, of course, that this woman is not
reflecting on her new awareness of the causes of her identifications
in a way that is appropriate for autonomous agents. She is not
processing the information "normally." Here, again, the question
is begged. Illegitimate influences are those whose force would not
survive autonomous reflection on their impact on the will. But they
could survive the reflective awareness of a nonautonomous agent.
Like the externality condition, the illegitimacy condition either is
too weak—permitting oppressive socialization as a legitimate
influence on autonomous agents—or it is circular—presupposing
that critical reflection is autonomous in the course of explaining
autonomy.
3.
We have seen that standard hierarchical views of autonomy have

difficulty understanding how critical reflection can work to restrict
autonomy. Marilyn Friedman has suggested that the problem may
stem from the idea that critical reflection always proceeds hierar
chically, from the top down.16 As Friedman puts it, "only if
reflection must be exclusively a 'top-down' affair is there no room
at the top for autonomy. If this assumption were abandoned, then
autonomy might be possible for a person in respect to her highest
principles. . . ,"17 So Friedman proposes that, just as our lowest
order desires can become more fully our own when they are
brought into alignment with our highest-order desires, our highest
order desires can be subjected to critical assessment in light of our
ground-level desires. For instance, recalcitrant first-order desires
and accompanying feelings of anger, frustration, or anxiety can
help us to detect oppressive higher-order attitudes and dissociate
ourselves from them. On Friedman's view, agents are autonomous
to the extent that the desires on which they act belong to a
motivational system that exhibits bi-directional integration,
desires at each level of the will finding support through critical
assessments based on desires at every other level.18
It does seem that autonomy can be gained through reflection
which issues from the standpoint of lower, as well as higher, levels
of the will. But this point does not address the fundamental
inadequacy of hierarchical accounts. Volitional integration is not
assured to support autonomy any more than hierarchical reflection
is. This sort of integration is precisely the ideal goal of much
oppressive socialization. Such socialization works to shape
persons' higher-order aims as well as to help people feel entirely
at ease with those aims from the standpoint of their lowest-level
motives. Ironically, an integration view detects threats to
autonomy only when the total internalization of autonomy
inhibiting socialization fails to take hold or begins to break down.
It is not surprising that Friedman's revision of standard
hierarchical theories cannot successfully analyze autonomy
inhibiting socialization, for integration and hierarchical views both
share a crucial assumption about how the ability to regulate
conduct through critical reflection matters for autonomy. They

hold that autonomy sets nothing more than a minimal constraint
on agents' competence at critical reflection: so long as agents can
form structurally defined, higher-order motives, they are potential
sources of autonomous action.19 These views assume that critical
reflection facilitates autonomy mainly in virtue of its efficacy in
the motivation of an agent's action, regardless of whether or not
the agent is a sufficiently competent criticizer to be able to
recognize and appreciate for herself the reasons there are for her
to act in various ways. Therefore, these views allow that, even if
an agent is quite unable to appreciate what would matter to her
were she rationally to consider her actual situation in the world,
this agent will act autonomously when desires with which she
critically identifies move her to act, no matter how her blindness
to the rational significance of her situation influenced those
identifications.
Yet competence at grasping reasons is often affected by the kind
of oppressive socialization I have described. (This is one mark of
the difference I noted in Section 1 between this sort of oppression
and socialization that oppresses by coercing its subjects. Coercion
typically succeeds only when it leaves its victims' rational
competence intact, for coercion depends on their recognizing the
balance of reasons that it has imposed.) Oppression of this kind
need not alter the motivational influence of reflection. It acquires
its insidious power, instead, by limiting in well-organized ways
what sorts of reason to act persons are able to recognize. This is
why I earlier underscored the untruth of the beliefs about their
health, sanity, character, and personal worth that feminine
socialization inculcates in many women. In leading women to
internalize gravely mistaken conceptions of themselves from a
very early age, such socialization systematically prevents many
women from recognizing more adequate views of their real
strength and value; it renders them unable to take seriously reasons
there are for them to regard their appearance differently. It can have
this effect without necessarily assaulting women's intelligence or
debilitating their powers of autonomous agency altogether. It can
erode competence at rational consideration by restricting persons'
capacities for imagining with sufficient sensitivity and seriousness
20
major alterations in the prevalent gender system. (Beliefs that
our gender system is natural and, in particular, beliefs that it is
biologically inevitable frequently function so as to block vivid
imagination of such alternatives.)
Hence, it is likely that the eighteen-year-old woman described
in section 1 has experienced various personal conflicts owing to
her gender socialization. She may, for instance, have had to wrestle
with her tendencies toward feminine deference in order to prove
her intellectual capabilities in the classroom and select a
challenging field of study. In so doing, she may have shown that
she had sufficient competence at critical reflection to be able to
appreciate the unreasonableness of some features of her gender
training. But this is compatible with her continuing to be deprived
of the conceptual resources and imaginative repertoire that would
allow her to re-evaluate the value she assigns to sculpting a
feminine appearance. One of the subtle effects of oppressive
systems of socialization is precisely that they can compart
mentalize or fragment persons' critical competence in this way.
Now persons do not suffer reduced autonomy merely because
they have false beliefs about what they should do, or because they
act contrary to what there are the best reasons for them to do. The
inadequacy of one's view of one's reasons or the deficient
rationality of one's actions does not by itself lessen one's
autonomy. I have proposed that autonomy requires having
sufficient competence at critical reflection to be able to detect and
appreciate the reasons there are to act in various ways. This is
compatible with falling short of perfect reasonableness by many
different routes. An agent can autonomously decide to curtail
rational consideration of certain of his motives or available lines
of action, for instance. As a result, he may come to do what there
are not very good reasons for him to do, without losing autonomy.
Likewise, one can exercise the requisite critical competence and
still arrive at a mistaken assessment of what there is reason for one
to do. Human competence can fail to yield perfect performance.
The standard accounts of autonomy I have surveyed can detect
the threat that socially perpetrated deception poses to autonomy,
but only when the deception blocks critical reflection entirely or
insulates it from motivating action. Those accounts fail to detect
the threat when, without disrupting the motivational potency of

reflection, deception systematically misdirects the substance of
reflection by limiting an agent's ability to assess her actions
rationally. As we saw when discussing Christman's view, merely
becoming aware of the social forces that have shaped one's
reflective attitudes may not be enough to allow one to acquire
adequate critical competence. Modifying hierarchical accounts by
requiring critical competence can equip us to explain the
autonomy-inhibiting effects of the pertinent sort of oppressive
socialization, yet preserve the compatibility of autonomy with
nonoppressive socialization. Our autonomy in no way suffers if we
grow up in communities that instill and nourish capacities to reflect
competently on ourselves and our situation in the world.
Thus far, I have argued that a view of autonomy which requires

the agent to be able to apprehend the reasons that pertain to her
course of action is better suited to account for the autonomy
diminishing effects of one type of oppressive socialization than are
a variety of hierarchical views. It is worth considering, however,
whether a view incorporating this condition would be suited to
explain other features of autonomous action. For one thing, while
it seems that higher-order identification with the first-order mo
tives that prompt action fails to suffice for autonomy, higher-order
motives do often serve prominent functions in autonomous action.
Can a view of autonomy that incorporates agents' competence to
grasp relevant reasons explain this?
Furthermore, one wonders what the ability to recognize reasons
necessarily has to do with the sort of self-regulation, or self
determination, that seems to stand at the conceptual center of the
notion of autonomy. The considerations that supply reasons for an
agent to act may well include some that are external to him in the
sense that they do not concern objects of his current motives
(including what the agent believes to be instrumentally related to
those objects).21 Why, then, should the agent's ability to
comprehend the rational significance of such considerations affect
his power to be self-determining in his will? If those considerations

do not concern what he presently aims at, then why should his
inability to appreciate them make his actions less fully his own?
This worry appears not to threaten hierarchical views, at least not
those views maintaining that autonomy depends only on structural
and causal relations which obtain among the present items of an
agent's will. I will take up these concerns in turn.
It is not difficult to see why, on the view I propose, higher-order
motivation commonly plays significant roles in autonomy. Since
desires typically supply reasons to act so as to promote the desired
states of affairs,22 a second-order desire that a certain first-order
desire move one to act—a second-order volition, in other
words—typically supplies one with additional reason to act upon
that first-order desire. Agents who are competent rational
criticizers of their conduct therefore must be able to recognize and
appreciate the reasons their higher-order motives afford.
This is true not merely because higher-order desires just are
desires. Higher-order desires that function as higher-order
volitions have a special place in the assessment of reasons for
acting. They affect not only what actions an agent has reason to
perform but also what motives the agent has reason to act upon. A
second-order volition may give one a reason to be moved to
perform a certain action by a particular motivational path. As
autonomy concerns the conditions under which an agent is moved
to act, not merely the conditions that lead an agent to perform one
action instead of another (that is what is at issue in an agent's
freedom to act), the reasons supplied by higher-order motives often
play an important role in the decisions of autonomous agents.
Higher-order motives can also function as effects of the agent's
employment of her critical competence. The agent who gives
consideration to her reasons to act and subsequently forms the
judgment that she has the most reason to act on certain motives,
can come to want to act upon those motives. Thus, autonomous
agents who exercise their competence to apprehend reasons can
acquire higher-order motives as a result. So the proposed condition
of autonomy predicts the significance of higher-order motivation
in at least two respects, as sources of pertinent reasons and as
possible effects of rational consideration.
The formation of higher-order motives is not necessary for

autonomy, however, and the proposed condition of autonomy has
the advantage that it permits this insight. If I presently desire to
have a cup of tea, I can autonomously act upon that desire without
endorsing the desire by forming a corresponding second-order
volition. If I can see that, in this instance, there is no good reason
for me not to want or to have tea, then it is unnecessary that I want
to want tea in order to act autonomously (so long as I do not have
a caffeine addiction and am not pathologically obsessed with
recreating British rituals, or any such thing). I may have no
particular (normative) reason to have this desire for tea, such as
some higher-order desire might supply. But inasmuch as I can
apprehend that my desire is not irrational and that I have no good
reason at the moment to do anything else, I can possess all the
critical ability that autonomy demands, the absence of explicit
higher-order endorsement of my desire notwithstanding.
These remarks about the role of higher-order desires are modest
ones. Yet they give the proposed condition of autonomy a marked
explanatory advantage over hierarchical views. Once we find that
higher-order identification neither ensures nor is necessary for
autonomy, we realize that hierarchical views do not have the
resources to explain why higher-order motives should have any
significant roles in autonomous action at all (in those cases in
which they do). Higher-order desires become just more items
thrown, now and then, onto the motivational heap. Why they
should have anything to do with autonomous agents' distinctive
capacities is unclear. My view, by contrast, can explain the roles
that higher-order motives frequently play in autonomous agents'
exercise of their rational competence, while also allowing that
items other than higher-order motives can perform those roles.
In response to the concern that the proposed condition of
autonomy clashes with the conviction that autonomous agents are
distinguished in virtue of being self-governing, two reminders are
in order. First, my earlier criticisms (in sections 2 and 3) of
hierarchical accounts indicate that conditions solely concerning
relations among the current states of an agent's will cannot suffice
for autonomy. Any such conditions could, in theory, be brought
about by the operation of oppressive socialization and, therefore,

are capable of functioning so as to restrict the agent's autonomy.
Second, we should remember that the proposed condition of
rational competence is not meant to be sufficient for autonomy. If
I am able to apprehend the reasons there are for me to arrive at
various decisions about what to do, then I nonetheless possess little
autonomy if any decision I might make upon weighing those
reasons would not effectively guide my behavior. Autonomy surely
involves an agent's ability to put practical judgments she might
make into action—what we might call an agent's control—no less
than it depends on her ability to discern reasons. Recalling the role
of control in autonomy also helps to explain why my theory's
emphasis on considerations possibly external to the actual states
of an agent's will is compatible with the idea that autonomous
actions must be regulated by the agent herself. The latter idea is
captured by the requirement of control, and the condition of
rational competence complements that requirement. I will not
discuss control further here, because the sort of oppressive
socialization that has provided my point of entry into this
discussion normally restricts autonomy without impairing control.
These points could prompt a reformulation of the worry
concerning self-determination. Perhaps what is troubling about a
condition linking autonomy to reasons for action is not that
reason-giving considerations can lie beyond the boundaries of an
agent's actual will, but rather that this condition introduces a
plainly normative element into the account. "Self-determination"
seems to denote certain powers autonomous agents possess that
figure in the explanation of their motivation and action. But
reasons for an agent to act are considerations bearing on what the
agent rationally should do. They serve to justify actions; their status
as reasons does not depend on their actually belonging to
explanations of the agent's actions. So one might plausibly wonder
why normative reasons should be guaranteed any place in an
account of autonomous agents' actual contribution to their
conduct.
Some reflection on the connection between reasons and the
agents for whom they are reasons suggests, however, that the
normative element of the proposed view of autonomy does not
operate in complete independence of actual features of the agent

and the content of the explanations his conduct could have.
Normative reasons for acting must be capable of taking on an
explanatory role in agents' actions. This fact constrains the degree
to which reasons can be external to an agent and his will.
The reasons there are for me to act in various ways are
considerations that rationally recommend my acting in those ways.
If I am deciding what to do, those reasons ideally should enter into
the process by which I judge what would be best, all around, for
me to do. Now, when I act autonomously—in which case I can
competently recognize and appreciate these reasons and can put
into effect my practical judgments about the course of action I
rationally ought to perform—these reasons must be capable of
being the grounds on which I form my decision and subsequently
undertake to act. That is, they must be capable not only of justifying
my decision but of belonging to what I accept as adequate
justification for my decision. But if I can act because I accept these
reasons as adequate grounds for so acting, then these reasons must
also be capable of figuring in the explanation of my action. They
must be capable of influencing my motivational system, owing to
their potential role in my deliberation.
In short, because the reasons there are for an autonomous agent
to act are reasons that she is capable of recognizing and setting out
to act upon, they must be capable of being her own reasons for
acting. Hence, they must be potential sources of motivation for
her. A consideration that could not motivate (to any degree) an
autonomous agent who rationally considers it in the course of
deliberation therefore cannot be a reason for that agent to act. Thus,
connecting one distinctive ability of autonomous agents to the
reasons that apply to their decisions does not permit their autonomy
to be determined by things entirely beyond the reach of their
motivational capacities. Such reasons appropriately bear upon
self-determination because, being reasons for the person to act,
they can also be the person's reasons for acting when the person
acts autonomously. Therefore, I do not believe that a rational
competence condition of autonomy divorces autonomy in any
counterintuitive manner from persons' wills.
5.
I conclude by considering whether or not the condition of

autonomy that I have presented has reasonable implications for our
understanding of oppressive feminine socialization and of what
should be done to overturn it.
It seems that my account would predict that, if feminine
socialization inhibits the autonomy of many women, then it is also
likely to diminish the autonomy of many men in much the same
way. I have suggested that feminine socialization gains much of
its power by operating to deceive many women about the
significance that cultivating an appearance which is pleasing to
men has for women's worth as persons. Women's autonomy is
reduced to the extent that they are socially trained to be blind to
the reasons there are for them to regard their appearance differently
than the norms of femininity recommend. But, by the same token,
men who develop their gender identity in societies that
oppressively socialize women are also liable to be blinded
systematically to important reasons there are for them to treat
women differently. In fact, the gender socialization of women
would be unlikely to have such widespread and devastating effects
on women's attitudes toward themselves were men not also
brought up to treat women in ways that promote the objectification
of women.
In this way, my view of autonomy predicts that feminine
socialization normally will inhibit many women's autonomy only
as it also inhibits many men's autonomy. It is important to note that
this does not show that feminine socialization oppresses men just
as seriously as it oppresses women. If the systematic operation of
certain social forces serves to diminish the autonomy of men and
women alike, then many women and men may be similarly
oppressed in that regard—though even this conclusion rests on the
questionable assumption that any widespread diminution of
autonomy brought about by such means is an instance of social
oppression. But this is compatible with feminine socialization's
being severely oppressive for women in other respects that do not
apply to many men. Feminine socialization imposes social,
psychological, economic, and moral burdens on women that it does
not impose on men, and it imposes few if any such comparable

burdens on men. It supports wide-ranging prerogatives for men at
the price of corresponding restrictions on women.
So, while feminine socialization typically restricts the rational
competence of many men and women, the reduction of autonomy
this entails normally weighs down upon women substantially more
than upon men. Such great social powers usually accompany the
limitations on men's rational competence in this case that they
suffer little from this decrease in autonomy. It does not follow that
there are no good reasons for men to regard women differently.
There being such reasons is what accounts for their diminished
autonomy in the first place. The point is just that women may have
urgent reasons to overturn norms of feminine appearance that are
of a sort that men do not have in this case.
The political implications of my account can also seem troubling
because they appear to leave room for the prospect of forcing
people to become more autonomous. If the influences of
socialization can reduce autonomy by curtailing persons' abilities
to grasp certain substantive reasons for them to act, then perhaps
autonomy can be augmented by forcibly getting such unfortunate
people to recognize those reasons, even if this involves violence
or threats of violence. The worry is that a view of autonomy
allegedly motivated by concern for oppressive socialization might
in this way provide a rationale for still more brutal social
oppression and more extreme assaults on autonomy.
By itself, the idea that powerful social forces can augment our
autonomy is not objectionable. If this were not the case, then
granting that social forces profoundly influence all of us, as
evidently seems to be true, would commit us to the thoroughgoing
skepticism about autonomy that I have sought to avoid from the
outset of this discussion. Even apart from empirical premises about
the usual power of the influence that socialization has upon
personal development, there is a straightforward theoretical reason
to accept that autonomy might be expanded due to the operation
of such external conditions. In the simplest case—the case of
gaining some capability for autonomous motivation in the first
place—there is no other way to acquire the abilities that equip us
to be motivated autonomously except through processes that
operate upon us nonautonomously. Unless autonomy is a natural,

fully developed endowment we possess at birth, we must gain the
abilities that first make us autonomous to some degree from a
position of formerly lacking those abilities. The processes that
instill those abilities in us cannot be regulated by those very
abilities. Hence it cannot be a flaw in the proposed view that it
allows some powerful social forces to have autonomy-enhancing
effects. The question is, does that view also imply that brutal
violence might effectively augment autonomy?
I do not see why the account must carry this implication. It is
not plausible in the least that violence would be an effective means
of getting people to recognize more of the rational significance
their situation has for their decisions. Of course, violence might
accidentally or indirectly facilitate increased sensitivity to reasons.
But this could not be the reliable, directly intended result of
violence. It is of the very nature of violence that it is not motivated
by genuine concern for the rational capabilities of the persons who
are its objects. To be violent is in part to seek to bring about certain
states of affairs without taking account of what could rationally
matter to those who stand in the way. Regarding others as objects
to be pushed about is not likely to teach them more about what they
might care about as more rational subjects. In particular, brutal
force would not be a reliable means of getting someone to
recognize what reasons there are not to subject people to brutal
force.
Moreover, even a view of autonomy that (implausibly) held that
people's autonomy could be extended directly through violent or
otherwise dehumanizing means would not be committed to
holding that such autonomy-enhancing effects justify those
oppressive means of bringing them about. The reasons there are
not to brutalize people may be such as to remain fully in force even
though brutality might produce greater autonomy. This can be the
case if those reasons do not concern the tendency of brutality to
diminish people's capacities to be moved autonomously to act, and
if those reasons do not apply only in the case of persons who are
already fully autonomous.
Notes
1. My aim in this essay is not to offer an account of the conditions under which
the effects of socialization are oppressive. I would suppose, however, that a
necessary aspect of oppressive social training is that it impede the autonomy
of the persons it oppresses. Since this essay examines a component of
autonomy that is often impaired under circumstances of social oppression,
it may supply some useful clues about how an account of oppression should
be pursued.
2. See John Berger's claim that the social presence of women is their ap
pearance. In Ways of Seeing, (New York: Viking Press, 1973), p. 47, Berger
writes,
... men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch
themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations
between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves.
The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus
she turns herself into an object—and most particularly an object of
vision: a sight.
3. Sandra Lee Bartky, "Narcissism, Femininity, and Alienation," Social Theory
and Practice 8 (1982): 136.1 am much indebted to Bartky's illuminating
analysis of the alienating features of feminine narcissism. For Bartky's most
recent treatment of this subject, see "Foucault, Femininity, and the Modern
ization of Patriarchal Power," in Femininity and Domination (New York:
Roudedge, 1990).
4. See Dinah Shore, "How To Look Your Best All Your Life," McCalls 106
(1979): 18, in which Shore says, "If I had just won the Nobel Peace Prize
but felt my hair looked awful, I would not be glowing with self-assurance
when I entered the room." Shore's remark is quoted in Bartky, "Narcissism,
Femininity, and Alienation," p. 127.
5. In order to highlight the component of autonomous motivation that I shall
examine below, I am writing as if the socialization of feminine appearance
functions coerci vely for some women and uncoercively for others. Obvious
ly, this is a simplification. An individual woman can, over time, move from
one attitude toward femininity's demands to another attitude. At a single
time she can regard some aspects of femininity as comprising genuine
conditions of her full personal worth, while regarding other aspects as
coercive impositions upon her. Most interestingly, a woman can regard the
very same elements of feminine socialization ambivalently; for instance, she
can feel torn between a view of her situation as coercive and a view of it as
a reasonable challenge in the course of normal personal growth. The power
to effect such sustained ambivalence can itself augment the oppressiveness
of socialization.
6. Notice that I am not claiming that any young woman who fits the charac
terization I have given and who has undergone the modes of feminization
which are currently normal in the U. S. necessarily has diminished

autonomy. I am claiming that if such a young woman has been led to certain
misunderstandings as a result of feminine socialization and has been
prevented systematically from escaping those misunderstandings, then her
socialization has impaired her autonomy even if she is quite autonomous in
other areas of her life.
7. Harry Frankfurt, "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person," Journal
of Philosophy 68 (1971): 5-20. I associate what Frankfurt terms "acting
freely," or "acting of one's own free will," with autonomous agency because
Frankfurt sees this to concern that special identification of agents with their
actions which is necessary for moral responsibility.
8. Eleonore Stump, "Sanctification, Hardening of the Heart, and Frankfurt's
Concept of Free Will," Journal of Philosophy 85 (1988): 395-420.
9. Stump, p. 400.
10. Stump, p. 400.
11. John Christman, "Autonomy: A Defense of the Split-level Self," Southern
Journal of Philosophy 25 (1987): 281-93.
12. Gerald Dworkin, 'The Concept of Autonomy," in John Christman, ed., The
Inner Citadel: Essays on Individual Autonomy (New York: Oxford Univer
sity Press, 1989), p. 61.
13. Christman, "Autonomy: A Defense of the Split-level Self," p. 289.
14. Christman, "Autonomy: A Defense of the Split-level Self," pp. 290-91.
15. Christman has informed me, in conversation, that he has since abandoned
the externality condition and has done so for many of the same reasons I
have given here.
16. Marilyn Friedman, "Autonomy and the Split-level Self," Southern Journal
of Philosophy 24 (1986): 19-35.
17. Friedman, p. 30.
18. Friedman continues to describe the will as being hierarchically structured,
though she indicates that this could be mistaken. See Friedman, p.34, fn. 29.
19. One example of a minimal rationality constraint that would be acceptable
to most proponents of these views would be the requirement that the agent's
beliefs and desires be consistent at the time of reflection. See Christman,
ed., The Inner Citadel, p. 12.
20. Norms of feminine appearance are especially clear examples of this. Most
people now have little difficulty entertaining the expansion of women's
economic and political power in our society, although they may not be able
to appreciate imaginatively the effects of such changes. But ask people to
entertain certain rather small changes in women's physical appearance, such
as the public display of body hair, and they very quickly become nervous,
defensive, or hostile.
21. This possibility does not entail commitment to an externalist theory of
reasons. I want to develop the proposed view of autonomy in a manner which
commits me to few substantive claims about what a good theory of reasons
to act will hold. See my discussion below about the connection between
autonomous agents' reasons and their motivational capabilities.
22. Clearly, not all desires supply reasons. If, for instance, a desire is intrinsically
irrational, or it belongs to an intrinsically irrational set of desires, or it was
formed only because the agent lacked certain available information, then the
desire will not provide a reason for the agent to act.
23. Stephen Darwall discusses a similar feature of reasons in Impartial Reason
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), pp. 35-42. Also see Bernard
Williams, "Internal and External Reasons," in Bernard Williams, Moral
Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 101-13. How
ever, neither Darwall nor Williams restrict their claims about the possible
explanatory force of reasons to autonomous agents. Without such a restric
tion, the sense of "possibility" their claims employ is uninteresting in this
context. If I cannot competently recognize certain reasons applying to my
actions, or I cannot put certain of my practical judgments into effect in my
action, then the sense in which I nevertheless could be moved by those
reasons is terribly weak. However, for autonomous agents (as I understand
them) the motivational capability of reasons is more robust an autonomous
agent who is willing to consider reasons carefully will tend to arrive at sound
practical judgments and will tend to be moved to act accordingly, other
things being equal.
24. This does not commit the proposed view of autonomy to any very restrictive
internalism regarding reasons. For instance, the argument above does not
imply that one's coming to accept a statement about the reasons there are
for one to act necessarily alters one's motives. Even in the case of
autonomous agents, recognizing reasons need not have motivational effects.
For an extended discussion of this point, see Christine M. Korsgaard,
"Skepticism About Practical Reason," Journal of Philosophy 83 (1986):
5-25, especially section III.
25.1 thank audiences at Wesleyan University, the 1990 Central Division Meet
ings of the American Philosophical Association, and the University of
Dayton's 1990 Philosophy Colloquium on feminism and moral psychology
for many helpful reactions to versions of this paper. In particular, I am
indebted to the reactions of Marilyn Fischer, Timo Airaksinen, and Brian
Fay.
Paul Benson
Department of Philosophy
The University of Dayton

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Florida State University Department of Philosophy

Autonomy and Oppressive Socialization

Florida State University Department of Philosophy is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,

Most accounts of autonomy currently hold that autonomous agen

an explanation of why the socialization involved is oppressive.1

Feminine gender socialization in our society attaches great sig

aspect of feminine socialization well when she writes, "The

contributes to a more subtle and oft neglected, yet no less dire,

appearance is a necessary ingredient of a woman's personal worth.

The type of autonomy-diminishing socialization I have described

Two attempts recently have been made to remedy this

(IEIs) on an agent's reflective identification with certain first-order

acceptable results only when it is question-begging. For instance,

The problem that this case poses for Christman's analysis of

We have seen that standard hierarchical views of autonomy have

conduct through critical reflection matters for autonomy. They

the threat when, without disrupting the motivational potency of

Thus far, I have argued that a view of autonomy which requires

his power to be self-determining in his will? If those considerations

The formation of higher-order motives is not necessary for

about by the operation of oppressive socialization and, therefore,

operate in complete independence of actual features of the agent

I conclude by considering whether or not the condition of

not impose on men, and it imposes few if any such comparable

operate upon us nonautonomously. Unless autonomy is a natural,

which are currently normal in the U. S. necessarily has diminished

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