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The Feminist Republic: Plato’s Idea of Gender Equality

Over the course of the conversation in Plato’s Republic, Socrates settles on a vision of the city where men and women perform the same roles, and their biological differences when it comes to reproduction are minimized as much as possible. His assertion of the equality of the sexes due to their common humanity sounds obvious and uncontroversial to the modern reader, but equally obvious (at least they should be) are the differences between men and women. These two elements, common humanity and difference in sex, must be understood in order to define gender roles in any society. Does the assessment found in the Republic nuance this understanding properly? Assuming near-total egalitarianism is possible, it would lead to the emptying of motherhood as only a biological phenomenon contained within the time span of pregnancy, and the erasure of fatherhood as entirely unnecessary, since the state rears and educates the children. Socrates rightly asserts the equality of men and women, but takes it too far, failing to honor their meaningful differences.

As Socrates and his interlocuters build their city in speech, they address the question of the roles of men and women. Socrates asks, “Do we think that the wives of our guardian watchdogs should guard what the males guard, hunt with them, and do everything else in common with them? Or should we keep the women at home, as incapable of doing this, since they must bear and rear the puppies, while the males work and have the entire care of the flock?”[1] In keeping with a theme predominant in their building of the city, Socrates’ students answer that “everything should be in common, except that the females are weaker and the males stronger,” which in turn leads to the conclusion that both men and women should receive the same education.[2] Socrates and his companions acknowledge the difference in physical strength between the sexes without using it as a determinant of woman’s value; their line of questioning concerning the fittingness of women as guardians instead focuses on the capacity of the female human nature to perform the same tasks as the male human nature.[3] While they initially agree that “a woman is by nature very different from a man,” they conclude that this difference is not “relevant to the particular ways of life themselves.”[4] The only difference between men and women, according to Socrates, is that “the females bear children while the males beget them.”[5] While Socrates presents this sex difference correctly, he incorrectly speaks of it as the only difference, rather than the foundational one. From this, Socrates argues that no task will be given, nor role held in the city on the basis of sex. Both men and women will be trained as guardians, and their sexual unions will be planned by the state, who will also supervise the rearing of the children at the hands of officials both male and female.[6] Women will meet the child’s physical necessities in pregnancy, and then, when it comes time to breastfeed, Socrates says the state must “[take] every precaution to ensure that no mother knows her own child.”[7] This discussion concludes with Socrates arguing that these practices will bind the city together, since everyone shares the same successes and failures, pleasures and pains.[8]

The society Socrates is building has, in the course of the line of thought at hand, become extremely egalitarian. An understanding of Socrates’ vision of a city characterized by nigh-nonexistent gender differences prompts a critical engagement. Does this attitude towards biological sex benefit the city or harm it? Stated differently, is Socrates correct in concluding that this arrangement is good for the city? Data gathered in Western societies with a high level of gender equality with respect to the law suggest that the philosopher’s ideas are not even plausible (let alone beneficial). People have different interests, and therefore choose different roles, according to biological sex. This is more pronounced, rather than less as may be expected, in societies with more gender egalitarianism. While individual women may enter stereotypically masculine fields (such as STEM, for example) women as a whole do not gravitate towards such jobs to the degree that men do, despite the best efforts of activists working to amend this “underrepresentation.” According to one source from the American Psychological Association, “[C]ontrary to the implications of some theoretical perspectives, gender differences in personality, values, and emotions are not smaller, but larger, in American and European cultures, in which greater progress has been made toward gender equality.”[9] Other studies have examined the way these differences in interests and personality play out over career choice.[10] If Socrates wants roles in the city assigned regardless of sex, these natural inclinations of men and women will be overruled in favor of what the state deems a person’s nature to be fit for. The state will have to force people, either outright or through deception (which Socrates seems to have no qualms about in such circumstances), into the roles chosen for them. This conclusion is concerning to say the least, as well as contradictory to Socrates’ argument that his proposal is both plausible and beneficial.[11]

This point about the implausibility of Socrates’ proposal is only a preliminary one. If this objection is set aside, and it is assumed for the sake of the argument that his ideas can be implemented across society, they would prove themselves to be extremely problematic. Socrates’ statement that the only gender difference is that “the females bear children while the males beget them,” downplays and devalues the extraordinarily intimate involvement of the woman in reproduction.[12] Woman is physiologically and psychologically set up for the maternal role, and that is not something that can be discarded or cast off until she becomes pregnant. While those in Socrates’ time did not have the benefits of modern science, it is recognized now that everything from the female bone structure, to the way her body networks fat, to her cyclical hormone pattern, is designed so she can conceive, and bear the strain of supporting another body with her own. She is also (generally) higher in the Big Five personality traits of agreeableness and neuroticism, which means that women are altruistic and kind, with greater sensitivity to negative emotion.[13] These aspects of woman’s personality make sense given her role in caring for a dependent, helpless, and vulnerable infant. While this is by no means a comprehensive list, it shows that there are few aspects of the female body or mind that can be explained without a reference to her capacity for motherhood. Socrates’ description suggests that bearing and raising children are accidental parts of womanhood, when in fact they are the integral parts.

Besides displaying an errant idea of woman’s maternity, Socrates’ idea of gender equality also implicitly devalues the place of men in society if women are equally capable of exactly the same roles. Many cultures have recognized man’s responsibility to govern, protect, and provide for his wife and children. A proper reverence for woman and her unique ability to give life leads to the recognition that she needs him in order to live out her maternity. She is able to be beautifully attentive to her child because she is under her husband’s protection and authority; strip away maternity and man’s role is hollow. Without the mother and child, he does not need to protect or provide, because there is no one for whom to protect or provide. The authority he has in order to fulfill these roles now becomes authority for the sake of authority. Socrates’ vision is not good for woman because that which is unique to her, that for which she is made, is reduced to just another process performed at the will of the state, and her identity precisely as woman becomes meaningless. Socrates’ vision is not good for man because those whom he is designed to serve are no longer entrusted to his authority and protection. The philosopher’s dismissal of gender differences as only pertaining to the biological differences in reproduction fails to recognize the ways woman’s and man’s identities are tied to their capacities as wife and mother, and as husband and father, roles which go beyond biology, even while remaining anchored therein.

There is no need for a modern reader of the Republic to wonder what society would look like if the gender egalitarianism favored by Socrates was implemented. Second-wave feminism, originating in the early 1970s, was extraordinarily successful in creating a culture that parallels the one Socrates was describing only in theory. The messages feminism spread (that there are no meaningful differences between men and women, that women can do everything men can do and do it better, etc.) have gone to such an extreme that people see gender as a social construct entirely divorced from biological sex.[14] The invention of the birth control pill, as well as the legalization of abortion, have given women a control over their reproductive capacity never possible or even imaginable before. Now, it is no longer a natural or obvious choice for women to bear and raise children; instead, they participate in the workforce like men do. The cultural and political changes that allowed this to happen have been viewed by feminists as integral to their mission, but they have sought to go even further in the replacement of family with career. Even the feminine desire for a family has been attacked, beginning with feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir’s description of it as woman’s complicity in her own enslavement. Beauvoir claims that “[woman] chooses to want her enslavement so ardently that it will seem to her to be the expression of her freedom.”[15] Therefore, this vision for gender equality must be implemented through the use of force, a conclusion that sounds familiar. Such was, and often still is, the feminist view of culture. The extent of the damage it has done to Western society is nearly inestimable, but, at the very least, the levels of depression, anxiety, and suicidality in the United States, especially among young people, suggest the gravity of its consequences for both women and men.[16] The devaluing of the necessary role of men described above is occurring now. Radical gender egalitarianism ultimately ends up destroying the father and defiling the mother.

Socrates, and all proponents of feminist intersectionality, rightly assert the equality of men and women, but take it too far, failing to honor their meaningful differences. He and his interlocuters decide that tasks in the city will be assigned without any reference to biological sex, and to facilitate this, the state will supervise reproduction, including the raising of children from birth. Even if total gender egalitarianism is possible, Socrates’ proposal fails to treat pregnancy and childbearing as integral to womanhood. It also implicitly devalues the necessary role of men, since, according to this view, women are equally capable of those same roles. The views contained in theRepublicon the respective functions of men and women have meaningful implications for today, since modern feminism has adopted a mission to eliminate all differences between the sexes, especially in the realm of reproduction. Separate femininity from motherhood, or masculinity from fatherhood, and femininity and masculinity themselves are lost, since the only way anyone (including Socrates) is capable of defining gender distinctions is in reference to these roles. Unless these two facts can be held with equal fervor, that man and woman are equal and that man and woman are different, society cannot approach either man or woman properly, nor would there be any reason for society to distinguish between the two.


[1] Plato, Republic, trans. G. M. A. Grube, from Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997), V.451d.

 

[2] Ibid, V.451e.

[3] Ibid, V.452e.

 

[4] Ibid, V.453b, 454c-d.

 

[5] Ibid, V.454d-e.

 

[6] Ibid, V.460b.

 

[7] Ibid, V.460c.

 

[8] Ibid, V.462b.

[9] Serge Guimond et al., “Culture, Gender, and the Self: Variations and Impact of Social Comparison Processes,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 92, no. 6 (2007), https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2007-07951-011.html.          

 

[10] David C. Geary, “Straight Talk About Sex Differences in Occupational Choices and Work-Family Tradeoffs,” Institute for Family Studies (2017), https://ifstudies.org/blog/straight-talk-about-sex-differences-in-occupational-choices-and-work-family-tradeoffs.

[11] Plato, V.452e-453.

 

[12] Ibid, V.454d.

 

[13] Richard Lippa, “Gender Differences in Personality and Interests: When, Where, and Why?,” Social and Personality Psychology Compass 4, no. 11 (2010), https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00320.x?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=.

[14] Carrie Gress, The Anti-Mary Exposed: Rescuing the Culture from Toxic Femininity (Charlotte: TAN Books, 2019), 56, 58, 91-92.

 

[15] Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chavallier (New York: Vintage, 2011), 774, https://uberty.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/1949_simone-de-beauvoir-the-second-sex.pdf.

 

[16] John Elflein, “U.S. Mental Health Issues - Statistics and Facts,” (Statistica, 2021), accessed March 26, 2022, https://www.statista.com/topics/1298/mental-health-issues/#topicHeader__wrapper.