Personal relationships under oppression: a feminist analysis

This chapter starts from a position of agreement with claims in the literature that the goods constitutive of close personal relationships are essential to human well-being, that social deprivation causes serious harms, and that personal relationships generate special claims and responsibilities. However, it aims to sound a note of caution about the dangers of assuming an overly idealised conception of human sociality and of personal relationships. While the goods constitutive of personal relationships are crucial for human well-being, and while social deprivation can indeed be a source of serious harm, suffering and injustice, personal relationships can also be a source of harm, suffering and injustice. For even the best of personal relationships typically involve a complex admixture of relationship goods and bads. This chapter focuses on the corrosive effects of social oppression, especially gender-based oppression, on personal relationship goods. Under conditions of oppression, many personal relationships are constituted within and by norms, beliefs and practices that make it difficult to realise the goods of personal relationships, tipping the complex balance between the goods and bads of personal relationships decidedly on the side of bads. As a result, personal relationship goods are often fragile and fraught under conditions of oppression. In developing this argument, the chapter discusses in detail two literary examples that powerfully illustrate how oppressive gender-based institutions, norms, and practices can corrode personal relationship goods, and cause distinctive forms of relational deprivation and injustice.