15 Questions with Martha Nussbaum

Martha Nussbaum, a law professor at the University of Chicago, who studied Classics and ancient philosophy at Harvard, recently gave a speech at the Harvard Book Store for her new book, “From Disgust to Humanity: Sexual Orientation and Constitutional Law.”  Nussbaum sat down with FM to give the low-down on her new book, her views on same-sex rights (see Greek military strategy circa 500 B.C.), and the legality behind public sex.

1.

Fifteen Minutes: What message would you like readers to take away from your new book about same-sex rights?

Martha Nussbaum: I think the message they should take away is that a lot of the legal discussions in this area have been influenced by irrational emotions of disgust and stigma, and that those are not good bases for law-making in a pluralistic society. And then when we remove that element and just look at the arguments in a clear-eyed way, I think it’s clear that the Constitution does support non-discrimination laws for gays and lesbians.

2.

FM: With more of an eye toward undergrads at Harvard, what would you hope for younger people to find in your book?

MN: I think they should learn what’s out there and get involved in the struggle for marriage equality, because what we need is to confront these issues with good arguments and clear legal and social thinking. So who better than undergraduates at Harvard to supply that?

3.

FM: What was your goal in writing this book?

MN: My whole aim was to address a wide audience, to persuade, to bring in new people. It was hard to figure out how to write about it without alienating my audience.

4.

FM: To that end, there are parts of the book that deal with public sex, explaining its legality in conjunction with freedom of sexual choice. Was writing about this difficult?

MN: I think the issues about public sex were hard because, first of all, very little good legal analysis has been devoted to them. People just don’t talk about that very much. I didn’t want to scare my audience away by telling them “all this entails accepting sex clubs.” But in the end I do that because I think that’s what accepting the right of sexual choice entails.

5.

FM: You’ve also written a book called “Sex and Social Justice.” Can you tell me a little about the basic premise behind that book?

MN: It’s about women’s equality, although it does have one chapter on lesbian and gay rights. There I tried to develop a framework for thinking about women’s rights grounded in an approach that combines the best features of liberalism, a focus on both liberty and equality, with an appreciation of the origins of subordination.

6.

FM: In what ways is this book an extension of that work?

MN: I think this book is continuous with all my work, but the difference is that this book is focused in America; most of my work is very international. Here I’m enmeshed in very specific details of American constitutional law.

7.

FM: Do you support gay rights?

MN: Oh, certainly.

8.

FM: How did you first get interested in this movement?

MN: I’ve been interested in it for a long time. As someone who studies the Greeks, I’ve been writing about ancient Greek homosexuality for a long time. I’ve also been an actress and I’ve seen people who were able to be respected and accepted in the theater world who were not able to be accepted in the larger world, and that moved me a lot.

9.

FM: On a related note, how do you feel about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”?

MN: Oh I’m very glad it’s on the way out, I think it’s absolutely ridiculous. Going back to the ancient Greeks, they actually constructed a famous fighting cohort with pairs of male lovers because they thought they would fight more boldly when they were vying to look good in the eyes of their lovers. The fighting forces have had gay and lesbian people for a very long time, and there’s something just very weird about the stance the Army has taken versus the stance that other countries with fine armies such as Canada, Britain, Israel take. It’s about time we just threw this out. It’s been the invitation to mean-spirited persecutions. I think it’s clear that’s not going to last much longer.

10.

FM: Where did you go to school?

MN: I actually started at Wellesley, but then I went to the Tisch School of the Arts the first year that it was in existence. But when I decided I didn’t want to be an actress I went to Washington Square College [now NYU] and got my B.A. in Classics there.

11.

FM: What was your experience going to college in the 1960s as a woman?

MN: Well, actually I had great support from my teachers and I was very lucky. But later, in graduate school, I encountered issues of sexual harassment which I had not encountered as an undergraduate, thank goodness, and I also encountered the terrible issues about child care and division of domestic labor.

12.

FM: How did those issues affect you?

MN: All of those things were particularly hard on women, and I was lucky enough to live through the period when sexual harassment first became taken seriously. Harvard was one of the first places to have such an anti-harrasment policy, but I’m afraid that having the policy is just part of solving the problem. It’s certainly not the whole solution.

13.

FM: What made you want to get involved in philosophy as a graduate student?

MN: I came to graduate school at Harvard in Classics and then I got very excited by what was going on in the ancient philosophy department. John Rawls was teaching. It was a great era, a really golden era in philosophy.

14.

FM: Recently an article in a Harvard student publication criticized the Ethnic Studies and Woman and Gender Studies concentrations, essentially saying they were pointless. What’s your reaction to that view?

MN: Women’s studies and ethnic studies are interdisciplinary just like the Classics, and I think they have just about the same amount of unity as Classics, and they’re just as respectable. I think the critics just want to make a lot of noise, and they haven’t really looked very deeply at what’s going on in these disciplines. They haven’t thought too much about how disciplines are formed.

15.

FM: Who is your favorite philosopher?

MN: J.S. Mill. Mill, you know, is a terrific philosopher, but I also find him very appealing as a human being who could respect women. If you think of most of the great figures of philosophy, most were incapable of respecting women. Mill didn’t just write about that, he lived that. When I ask myself who would I like to meet, I think, “Well, I would like to meet somebody who would talk to me.”