Several of Carol Gilligan’s colleagues wrote a book at about the same time that Gilligan was advocating the finding of voice among women. I have already mentioned these women: Mary Belenky and her colleagues. They (Belenky, et. al., 1986) offered a powerful account of women who must remain silent because of the constraints placed on them by their society. Along with her colleagues, Belenky asked how these women of silence would come to know anything. Can one engage in the acquisition of knowledge—can one learn—when there is no active verbal engagement with other people? Is a person ever free if they can never speak or engage with other people in knowledge-generating discourse? I would suggest that the answer is “No.” Freedom requires engagement and the creation of shared knowledge. As I noted previously, we might consider interactions with other people to be the foundation for not only our sense of self, but also our fundamental sense of reality (Brothers, 2001). If this is the case, then our hold on reality is tenuous if we must remain silent.
Taking Action
As I have noted, while voice is of primary importance for some people (especially women), action is of primary importance for other people (especially men). Many men (and some women) primarily connect with other people and express their feelings in modes other than words. This predilection for action rather than words has prevailed for many centuries in Western culture, and virtually all other cultures in the world. Many men (and women) have used rituals, ceremony, gift-giving, symbolic gestures, and other physical modes to express their feelings. They bring flowers as an expression of love. They engage in chants, face-painting and cheers to express their enthusiastic support for a sports team. They go fishing with a friend and silently sit beside their friend. The act of fishing together is itself a manifestation of their friendship.
These action-oriented men (and women) look forward to the expression of family devotion at the Sunday evening dinner each week. They choke up at the playing of the national anthem and care deeply about the special evening at the movies each Friday night with their spouse. Repetition, tradition and tangible evidence of support and commitment are at the heart of the matter. Men’s ways of feeling begin with the assumption that one’s feelings are most believable when they translate into action: “Action speaks louder than words”. “Watch what they do and not what they say!” This alternative mode of expressing feelings can be distilled into one phrase: “show me.” Connections are made through the gestures being articulating and the patterns of behavior being forming in setting up and maintaining a relationship. Emblematic short-cuts are engaged, with humor and storytelling often replacing the need to elaborate on personal insights or acknowledge vulnerabilities out loud. This is the “man’s way.”
Today, there are many “ways” – and these ways are often unrelated to gender. While it is appropriate and timely that gender-based differences are now being challenged, the distinction to be drawn between connecting via voice rather than action is important—regardless of the source of this distinction. We must appreciate this distinction and recognize, as Carol Gilligan has done, that there is a wide diversity of strategies for not only reasoning about moral behavior but also finding the best way to connect with other people.
