Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep poses many questions that relate to today’s society. The questions are formed mainly from the characters and their choices as the novel progresses. It poses questions about empathy and equality for women or the lack thereof. Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto” and the United Nations’ “Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls” are articles that discuss the struggles that many women face and how society is attempting to change this issue.
These pieces, in some way, all connect back to the idea of empathy – the idea that we can put ourselves in another’s shoes and experience their problems as if they were our own without any judgement and without any form of bias. Society shapes the way we view those that are different than ourselves and how we view the world as a whole by using opinions via social media that manipulate our minds, which over time is making us less empathetic. The idea of empathy is something that society and more importantly college students have struggled with. According to “Empathizing 101,” college aged students are 40 percent less empathetic than those who were in college decades ago (Grasgreen 2010). This article also states that empathy is strongly believed to be an advocate for understanding and civility (Grasgreen 2010). This article then poses a question about society. Would the younger generation be less empathetic towards feminism issues than an older generation?
Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep delves into many of these social issues that we face in our own society. Chapter 16 of the novel goes into more detail about the inequality between man and woman or in this case man and android. Rick, a bounty hunter, and Rachael, an android, end up having sexual relations even though Rick is already married. Many argue that this is considered adultery and that it’s wrong; however, some also argue that Rachael is just an android and isn’t even real so it doesn’t matter if Rick uses her for sex. There was one quote in this chapter that stood out as being almost discriminatory. Rachael showed up at Rick’s hotel room and started to unpack and get undressed when Rick decided to observe her appearance. “The total impression was good, however. Although definitely that of a girl, not a woman. Except for the restless, shrewd eyes” (Dick 187). Describing her appearance as young or as a girl instead of a woman after observing the fact that Rachael was built with a smaller frame and bust, in a way is discriminating towards women who naturally have a small build. While that may seem far-fetched and a little strange to connect a novel to real life, we do see this happening in our society. Women are constantly being judged by men and even by other women just by the way that they are built and by the way that they look. We don’t have control over our appearances unless we alter ourselves, so why judge one another?
To go along with this thought, Rachel questions Rick about whether or not he would have sex with another android. Rick replied with “If it was a girl. If she resembled you” (Dick 197). The fact that Rick is a married man and can go out and have sex with another woman, android, or human, is disturbing in a way. He’s willing to cheat on his wife just to fulfill his own needs, which is a disgusting thing to do. However, many women in today’s society go through this every day. We all probably know someone that has been in a relationship with someone that has cheated on them just to get what they wanted.
Much has been written about women’s equality and feminism. Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto” argues that women face a lot of trials and tribulations and sometimes aren’t even accepted by other women. This often means that they face some form of discrimination within their own groups. Haraway talks about “oppositional consciousness,” which is the idea of an empowering mental state that prepares members of an oppressed group to undermine, reform, and overthrow a dominant system (Haraway 296). This idea was mentioned to explain how women should work together in order to prove their abilities and come together as one in order to go against the more dominant group, which in our society is men. However, she also mentions how women of color are being discriminated against by other women and are usually found being “left out of even the privileged oppressed authorial categories…” (Haraway 296). Not only are these women being discriminated against by men, they are also facing judgment from other women. This connects back to chapter 16 of Dick’s novel where Rick was judging Rachael by her appearance or body type; however, in this case these women are being judged because of their race and social class. Haraway also mentions how most feminists are “marginalized” mainly because of “epistemologies,” which is defined as being mainly opinions, which essentially means that women are seen as insignificant based off of opinions (Haraway 297).
Recently, I also read a short article published by the United Nations about women’s equality and why it matters. The article explains how women and girls make up “half of the world’s population and therefore also half of its potential” (“Gender Equality: Why It Matters,” n.d.). To relate this back to Dick’s novel, we could think about how the female androids were actually worth something. They all were living beings and they had lives of their own. If the world were different in that novel, would life for the female androids be different or would it be just like our society where women have to fight for their rights every single day of their lives?
This article also states how “gender equality is not only a fundamental human right, but a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world (“Gender Equality: Why It Matters,” n.d.). Unfortunately, I don’t think that we are there yet nor will we be there for a while. This meaning that our society is so stuck in its ways that achieving equality for everyone, regardless of gender, is going to be almost impossible. We have made a lot of advancements such as women being able to vote, work, and drive; however, there are still a lot of cases of discrimination towards women. A lot of women today face differences in pay, harassment, and inclusion. There are also a lot of cases in which men in relationships still want to be in control of almost everything. There is a great example of this in the beginning of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
Going back to the beginning of the novel, Rick and his wife, Iran, get into an argument over the Penfield mood organ, which is what controls their feelings for the day. Rick tells Iran that she set her Penfield too weak and that he’ll fix it for her so she can be more awake. After attempting to explain that, Rick then explains to Iran that if she sets it high enough she’ll be happier to be awake and that “at setting C it overcomes the threshold barring consciousness” as it does for him (Dick 3). Throughout that chapter, Rick tries to control Iran and her decisions, which relates back to feminism and women’s equality. Rick feels like he needs to make decisions for Iran and try to help her even though she is an independent person who is perfectly capable of making her own choices. Just like in today’s society, a lot of cultures such as modern day American cultures, Muslim cultures, and Indian cultures have a dominant male figure that make the decisions for the women and if the women don’t comply, they will most likely face some form of punishment. American culture is getting better, but there are still cases where the men want to be in control.
Like mentioned earlier, all of these articles relate back to one key theme of empathy. An article by The New York Times states that “One death is a tragedy. One million is a statistic” (Cameron, Inzlicht, Cunningham 2015). This can also be said for women and feminism. One woman being discriminated against is an awful thing; however, when millions of women face discrimination, nobody bats an eye. This quote also can be related back to Dick’s novel. When Rick and the other bounty hunters retire or kill an android, nobody seems to care because it’s the normal thing to do. The article also states “not only does empathy seem to fail when it is needed the most, but it also appears to play favorites” (Cameron, Inzlicht, Cunningham 2015). Like we see in Haraway’s articles, feminism and the empathy within it can play favorites. Haraway states that even “we,” meaning feminists, can’t claim any innocence from practicing dominations (Haraway 297). It’s sad to think that even women aren’t empathetic towards each other and can’t be innocent when it comes to cases of mistreating one another.
In the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, we see that empathy has favorites. Rick only seems to have empathy for Rachael. This might be because they had sex or it might be because he sees something in her, meaning that he sees the potential and good in her. Since Rick was probably socialized to think that androids were awful beings, it’s interesting to see how he only cares for Rachael, but is still willing to retire the other existing androids. We can also see this in today’s society with feminism. We, as a society, only seem to care when we can relate to it or when it impacts us.
This then raises the question of what makes us human? What differentiates men and women other than anatomy? So many people can empathize when a male goes through some sort of adversity, but when a female faces some sort of trouble it’s no big deal. Nobody is innocent to this, even other women ignore these troubles. To give an example, I’m no innocent one to being blind to these issues. I for one am not huge into the feminist movement; however, I do feel as though equal treatment is necessary so when I hear about the typical issues that women face I tend to be blind to them. By this I mean that I tend to ignore the issue because I feel like it doesn’t quite involve me yet, which is a problem considering that instead of ignoring the problems I should be looking at what’s going on and focus more on helping out or supporting other women.
The next question is does empathy actually make us human? According to The New York Times, “the ‘limits’ to our empathy are merely apparent, and can change, sometimes drastically, depending on what we want to feel” (Cameron, Inzlicht, Cunningham 2015). If we can truly choose what we empathize with, then is empathy actually something that we can look at to define ourselves as human? Just because someone doesn’t put themselves into another’s shoes, doesn’t mean that they aren’t human. We all are blind to something in today’s society whether it’s the shootings that constantly occur or if it’s the degrading of women.
Nobody can claim innocence to being blind to society’s ugly side: it’s what we are socialized to do. We see events like this on the news so often that we start to become numb to the fact that terrible things happen every day. When we hear about the protestors that come out to spread their opinions and sometimes hate towards something like the feminist movement, does anybody actually do anything to stop it? The bystander effect, which is when an individual is less likely to help someone due to the fact that they think someone else will help, occurs a lot in society and occurs a lot during various protests and means of spreading the word about feminism and other social issues. This effect will most likely never stop and will lead to more people becoming blind to empathy.
Overall, empathy isn’t the determining factor of whether someone is human or not since we all can be blind to major social issues like feminism. There really is nothing that determines us as being human other than basic biology. We see this through works like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and “A Cyborg Manifesto” and if those works do actually relate back to our everyday life, the problems we face are far beyond what we can change.
Works Cited:
Daryl Cameron, Michael Inzlicht and William A. Cunningham. “Opinion | Empathy Is Actually a Choice.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 10 July 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/opinion/sunday/empathy-is-actually-a-choice.html.
Dick, Phillip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Del Ray, 1968.
“Empathizing 101.” Inside Higher Ed, www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/11/24/empathy.
“Gender equality and women’s empowerment.” United Nations, United Nations, www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/gender-equality/.
Haraway, Donna. “A Cyborg Manifesto.” N.p. n.d.