And if, before he relapsed into his old sexism and implicit biases, he was planning a conference along with male professors who had never looked beyond the norms of their profession, and he suggested choosing a woman philosopher as a keynote speaker, would he not be seen as ridiculous? Male philosophy professors would say of him that he took sabbatical to think about gender equality and came back like a woman who can’t think critically; they would add that it is obviously better not to think about the problems of the profession; and if a junior philosopher tried to force more male philosophers to think about gender equality, if they could catch the culprit, they would deny him or her tenure.
Without a doubt.
Adapted from Benjamin Jowett's translation of The Republic. Image: Plato's Allegory of the Cave by Jan Saenredam, according to Cornelis van Haarlem, 1604, Albertina, Vienna.
