The philosopher Thomas Hill Jr. made up a scenario decades ago about a woman who is extremely deferential and subservient to her husband. Below is a quote from him that sums up the scenario:
“The deferential wife is utterly devoted to serving her husband. She buys the clothes he prefers, invites the guests he wants to entertain, and makes love whenever he is in the mood. She willingly moves to a new city in order for him to have a more attractive job, counting her own friendships and geographical preferences insignificant by comparison… She tends not to form her own interests, values, and ideals; and, when she does, she counts them as less important than her husband’s… The deferential wife believes that the proper role for a woman is to serve her family.”
Assuming the wife (or husband if the genders were reversed) genuinely believes in the rightness of her deference and/or enjoys it and wasn’t brainwashed or coerced, what are the best arguments philosophers would make against her (or anyone) living a life like this?
Would it simply be that it isn’t immoral in the traditional harm sense of the word but is nonetheless an unhealthy way to live and/or a lifestyle you shouldn’t want to be the kind of person that lives?
It might depend on who the husband is. It might make more sense for a spouse (of either gender) to defer to a multi-billionaire or to a high-powered politician, than just attaching themself that way to the first random schmo they meet.
It’s not the occupation that matters; it’s the level of success.
I think we can all agree that both parties to a relationship should get something out of it, yes? Well, to some degree, being married to a highly-successful person, and presumably having children with them, is its own reward. And if the person is successful enough, it might be enough of a reward to be worth giving up all of the other traditional rewards of a relationship for that.
And note that it works both ways: A highly-successful woman could have a deferential husband. Or a successful man could have a deferential husband, or a successful woman a deferential wife. We’re just most used to seeing the successful husband, deferential wife pairing because in our society, it’s easiest for straight men to find success.
As long as someone isn’t being coerced or threatened to act that way, I think it’s fine. Some people get overwhelmed with life and all the decisions that come with it. They may find it peaceful to not have to make so many decisions and just go with what their partner wants.
One could similarly conjure up a hypothetical slave who sincerely believes in their own inferiority, and master’s superiority, and is fully content obeying their every whim. For that scenario, my response would be that this enslaved person has been successfully and traumatically brainwashed by the prevailing slavery justifications. I’m not sure how the OP’s scenario is substantively different.
The issue is that due to institutionalized misogyny, there are endless levers of power (religion, economics, the legal system, the social system, etc) that are designed to make women vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. So a situation like this can easily be looked at through a lens of women being coerced into a lifestyle she doesn’t want through institutionalized misogyny.
Having said that if the woman in the situation has a good education and can be financially self sufficient anytime she wants, and can leave the relationship anytime she wants, can express her own needs without fear of mistreatment, and enters the relationship consensually and can leave it anytime she wants without fear of consequences, I don’t think its really a big deal the same way it wouldn’t be a big deal if this were a lesbian or gay dynamic, or if the man were in this position of subservience.
To me the subservient spouse is a broken person. She, (in the quote) has given up not just her agency she’s given up her personhood i.e. her soul if you will. A person with no interest outside of what her/his spouse tells them is worthwhile is hardly a sentient being. They are nothing but an empty shell waiting to be filled with whatever uberspouse fills them with. It’s entirely repugnant.
Realistically, it’s a given that such a person will be abused. In fact, the dominant partner would find it highly difficult to not abuse them whether they wanted to or not. Human relationships depend on both sides pushing for what they want to come to a reasonable compromise; in this scenario the dominant party would essentially have to have telepathic powers to know whether they are trampling on the submissive party or not.
From what I’ve heard from the BDSM crowd this describes a pathologically submissive personality type that is best avoided. The ability to say “no” is important.
I did actually think about Swift when I was talking about hypothetical high-status women. She doubtless could, if she wanted, have found a fully-deferential husband. But of course, Kelce is himself very high-status, with a job that he’s very successful at and which drives many decisions.
But to all of those saying that these deferential spouses have given up their autonomy, and their personhood or soul with it, what do you suggest? Should they be prohibited from entering into such relationships? Wouldn’t that also be taking away their autonomy? Even if it’s a problem, it’s not an easy one to solve.
It’s hard to imagine those conditions being satisfied. The woman might’ve had a good education, but any professional skills she might’ve had would have deteriorated, not to mention the social skills and agency to make her own way in the world.
Even if she can technically leave anytime she wants, the questions how? and for what? are unavoidable. If you are free to walk out the door, but are leaving with only the belongings she can carry and only enough cash to get through the day, that’s not very free.
can express her own needs without fear of mistreatment
What needs? The person described in the OP has chosen to have no needs of her own.
They have no autonomy, they are mentally ill in a way that precludes them from having any. They need treatment, not marriage.
The issue of “should it be voluntary” doesn’t even arise in this case, since the core of their pathology is they have no agency and can’t object to anything. Whether they get treatment or not won’t be their choice, as they are incapable of choice.
You can’t outlaw every bad decision. People have the right to enter into bad relationships. Analogously, if you know a man is abusive, you can warn your woman friend against getting involved with him, but we don’t get to commit our friends to a mental institution if they’re about to make such a choice.
I wonder more about women who may have never had the choice to begin with. The local Mennonites have a booth every week at the local farmers’ market, and the girls/young women (can’t say if they’re over 18 or not) are dressed in dresses that cover them from neck down to wrists and ankles. (ETA: And bonnets. Can’t forget the bonnets.) And I have come to wonder: if they wanted to become anything besides the wife of a young Mennonite man, would they have the education and skills to survive outside their community?
I don’t know the answer to that question, but it increasingly troubles me.
you could argue the other way that they have actually used their agency to willingly choose this lifestyle
agreed. If everyone is fully informed and agreed to the arrangement, it’s not for me to tell them what they can and can’t do. Trying to tell others how they need to act is actually removing their agency in this situation
this is so completely infantilizing that it doesn’t even deserve a response. Who are you to judge what makes a person mentally ill?
I don’t know how you could possibly know that. Take the Mennonite example above – a woman brought up from birth to assume that women have to be totally deferential to men – could that woman really be said to be choosing that path?
If there’s someone brought up in a totally equal culture (as if that could exist) and has experienced life as an equal to others who then decides that it’s all too much and they choose to give up their agency, then sure. How realistic is that?
My first wife was like that. It took me more than 10 years to get her to be more autonomous. She was blissfully happy in her submissive role. Her entire purpose in life was to serve her family. I was so proud of myself for helping her to overcome her submissiveness. Once she did, her life slowly started to unravel. We divorced, and her life was never happy again. If a relationship is working, it is best not to judge. Looking back, I think it was fair to say that she was the wind beneath my wings.
The Amish do have a tradition called “Rumspringa”, where young people on the verge of adulthood live for a year outside of the community, to see what the rest of the world is like. Of course, young people out on their own without older supervision often leads to a lot of bad decisions during this time, but some of them do choose not to go back to the Amish community afterwards. But also, some of them do choose to go back.
And the Amish and Mennonite women would, of course, point out that “English” women are also conditioned by their societies to choose the clothing styles that they do, and would argue that our fashions are just as exploitive of women, or more so, than theirs are.
Well, I’m not Der_Trihs, but I’ll take a stab at it from my POV.
Any free thinking person can do what they want. But, why would they want to? What led a person to decide that becoming a slave, submerging their own free will to that of another, is a good choice? Why would a person use their own autonomy to…give up their autonomy?
We don’t live in a vacuum. A woman who, in 2026, decided to be a ‘deferential wife’, didn’t just decide on her own from base axioms. Society has a big role in this. Misogyny, sexist attitudes, pop culture, “trad wives”, abusive fathers, sexualized 6 year old beauty contestants - this all has an affect, sometimes subconscious.
The bottom line is, a ‘deferential wife’ is some incel’s idea of the ‘perfect woman’. “Deaf, dumb and blind and owns a liquor store” was another one I heard 45 years ago. Guys can be assholes - what else is new?
I would never get involved with a woman like the OP describes. I would want to (but wouldn’t because I respect her autonomy, such as it is) send her off for deprogramming.
This problem is the classic case of “I don’t like your values, so I’m going to impose my values on you”. See also the French laws against wearing very modest swimwear.
The opinion expressed in this quote is extremely dehumanizing. It’s again the “I don’t agree with how you exercise your rights, so therefore you don’t deserve rights”.
