Sunday Reading

You could do a lot worse than reading Amanda today on our old dear friend, Leon Kass. As you may remember, someone has decided to republish Leon Kass's expert opinions on the meaning of being a woman, from 1997, and I earlier blogged about the first installment. Now a second one has come out and Amanda says pretty much everything that needs to be said about it.

It is fun to imagine a reversal of Kass's writings. What would happen if some woman pontificated on the natural role of men and how their sperm defines them? What would happen if men were told that they are the incubators of their sperm and should base their ethics on what happens to each and every one of those little tailed critters? No more toilet bowls as a destiny, for any of them! Must worry about the quality of the wombs around here, and so on.

But such reversals don't happen, and that tells us much more about who has the power in this society than anything else. Leon Kass still has the right to try to define women, but I can't think of a single woman who would have the right to define Leon Kass.