Purpose:
The midterm paper allows you to analyze the conceptual and normative issues surrounding partnership or gender.
Directions
We have encountered a range of views on the nature and purpose of romantic partnership as an intimate practice between consenting adults. We have also grappled with a bunch of conceptual and normative issues surrounding gender as a part of our everyday lived experience.
In this paper, you will select either partnership or gender as your topic and then proceed to offer an analysis of the conceptual and normative issues surrounding it.
Option A: If you select partnership, your task is threefold.
First, explain what the core values of romantic partnership are, in your view. What is its proper point or purpose? How should we understand it in its ideal form; and how important is it, really (if at all), for a fulfilling life? What role does commitment play, and what should it look like? Does it ideally involve monogamy, or is polyamory an equally viable and valuable model for intimacy? You may defend any normative conception of romantic partnership you wish. You will not be evaluated on that basis. The only requirement is that you do so by providing clear reasoning supported by evidence drawn at least in part from your reading of assigned material. You do not have to agree with anything we have read on the topic. But you must reference at least some of what we have read in making your case (cite 1-2 separate assigned materials in this section). Devote roughly one-third of your paper (500 words) to this task.
Second, draw out the implications of what you have just said about the normative character of marriage for its appropriate legal and social character. What (if anything) should partnership look like as a part of our society’s public institutions? Does it require that marriage, specifically, be available for anyone who wants it, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, or monogamy status? Note that you do not have to endorse the claim that marriage is important and defensible: you may (or may not) think that it should be abolished.
