“Friendly” Men and Social Roles

Abstract

In 1983, Andrea Dworkin gave a speech entitled “I Want a Twenty-Four-Hour Truce during Which There Is No Rape,” in which she argued that the only way to put an end to the culture of rape in society is for men to take responsibility for it. The view that it is up to men to dismantle the culture of rape—including “friendly” men, who do not actively endorse and perpetuate this culture—might have been considered radical at the time, but the same is no longer true today. Dworkin’s view, or something very close to it, is now garnering widespread attention and credibility. The purpose of this article is to find a philosophical theory of responsibility that can vindicate and elucidate Dworkin’s claims. In order to do so, I develop a view that combines Zheng’s role-ideal model of responsibility with Witt’s conception of gender as a mega social role. I argue that by combining these accounts we find a philosophically satisfying theory of what it means to say, with Dworkin, that men are responsible for the culture of rape.

Keywords

• collective responsibility
• structural injustice
• social roles
• rape culture
• Andrea Dworkin