McDonald (2020, pp. 19) highlights that the unintentional performance of actions
isn’t always problematic regarding negative speaker autonomy. However, in the cases
where individuals can have obligations and entitlements imposed onto them, in which
they did not participate, is problematic. For example, how a woman can find herself in
the position of not refusing sex when this isn’t her intended illocutionary act is
problematic. The ability of the constitutional theory to lack the component of negative
speaker autonomy undermines women’s autonomy. It takes away the rights of
minorities to act as individual agents as their actions are reconstituted to ones they
don’t intend to perform.
If autonomy among such groups is lost this has concerning implications for how
they could be allowed to be treated or in this case miss treated. It is often thought that
we owe fewer moral duties to less autonomous beings, and as it has just been
suggested by the constitutional theory that women have less autonomy, this could be
used to suggest that they deserve lesser moral treatment (McDonald, 2020, pp. 19).
This is obviously absurd and potentially the biggest criticism of the constitutional
theory which leads to McDonald (2020) rejecting it. The ratification theory, on the
other hand, is void of this criticism as it makes it impossible for an individual to
unintentionally perform an illocutionary. It suggests that we all have negative speaker
autonomy, and that marginalised people are wronged by having less positive speaker
autonomy which can lead to them being misinterpreted or silenced (McDonald, 2020,
pp.19).
The literature by McDonald (2020) has clearly shown that the constitutional theory
fails to provide an adequate theory of uptake on three key levels. It is wrong in terms
of how it goes against the common way we think about speech, it has an element of
impossibility and has problematic political implications with respect to autonomy. All
problems identified above regarding the constitutional theory are not present within
the ratification theory, and so at this stage, it makes sense to deem the ratification
70
Made with FlippingBook HTML5