Feminist Philosophy, Miscellaneous

This chapter uses feminist standpoint theory to investigate Diotima’s epistemic advantage in Plato’s Symposium. Scholars have wondered why Diotima – a woman speaking about the role of erōs in gestation, childbirth, and childrearing – voices the view that Plato privileges most among all the symposiasts (Halperin 1990, Evans 2006, Hobbs 2007). Feminist standpoint theory is useful in developing a novel answer to this question; it supposes that oppressed groups, because they occupy different social locations, often develop epistemic privileges over their (...) dominant counterparts, especially with respect to finding lacunae in dominant narratives (cf. Hartsock 1987, Collins 1990, Harding 1987 and 1993, and Intemann 2016). This chapter proposes that Diotima’s unique social location – she is an older, non-Athenian woman, well versed in gestation, childbirth, and childrearing – disposes her to know something about erōs that the dominant group, the Athenian pederasts, do not. What she knows is that having erōs for something does not merely inspire one to pursue or possess it; by attending to how erōs affects women, she argues that it also manifests as a desire to reproduce what is beloved and care for it. Diotima’s standpoint is epistemically revelatory, then, because it establishes that love is far more than the pursuit of beauty; it is a creative and laborious act. Moreover, her standpoint is ethically revelatory, since she argues that the highest form of love entails fostering and nourishing virtue in others. Understood in this way, Diotima is espousing something like a protofeminist ethics of care. (shrink)

This volume deploys recent feminist epistemological frameworks to analyze how concepts like knowledge, authority, rationality, objectivity and testimony were constructed in Greece and Rome. The introduction serves as a field guide to feminist epistemological interpretations of classical sources, and the following sixteen chapters treat a variety of genres and time periods, from Greek poetry, tragedy, philosophy, oratory, historiography and material culture to Roman comedy, epic, oratory, letters, law and their reception. By using an intersectional approach to demonstrate how epistemic systems (...) exclude and pathologize the experiences of ancient women and other oppressed groups, these contributions aid in the recovery of non-dominant narratives and reveal issues of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual identity, religion, age, class, familial status and citizenship in the ancient and modern world. The volume contributes to a more inclusive and equitable study of classical antiquity and builds transhistorical connections capable of exposing similar injustices in our own time. (shrink)

Con el objetivo de reflexionar sobre la potencialidad filosófica y política que tienen los afectos “negativos”, me interesa repensar el rol social de estos afectos a partir de abordar los efectos, en términos de agencialidad, que pueden propiciar en el ámbito político. Para ello, comenzaré con una breve caracterización sobre las implicancias del concepto de “olas” del feminismo, para entender a grandes rasgos los cambios históricos conquistados por las luchas feministas y los activismos. En este sentido, me situaré en la (...) “cuarta ola” del feminismo para abordar las nociones vinculadas al giro afectivo, a partir del fuerte cuestionamiento que esta matriz teórica le realiza a la noción de temporalidad lineal. Finalmente, analizaré la potencialidad que portan los afectos “negativos” en la escena política, a partir de resaltar el fuerte tono revolucionario que estas emociones, en tanto expresiones de la visceralidad, pueden tener en la transformación de la sociedad cuando irrumpen en el orden público. (shrink)

Theories about what a mind is entail views about who (or what) has a mind and vice versa. This chapter reframes the classic problem of how the mind interacts with the body in terms of the question of mental attribution: Which bodies have minds? Critical social theorists’ descriptions of mental attribution associated with the bodies of women, Black people, colonized people, laborers, and others, reveals three metaphysical components of mental attribution that are respectively associated with experiences of immanence and non-being, (...) dehumanization, and objectification and hypermateriality: (1) the ratio component, (2) the comparison component, and (3) the constitution component. A theory’s approach to each of these components collectively forms its “attribution pattern.” Physicalist panpsychisms provide ready examples of attribution patterns that apply to the set of all bodies that exist. Russellian panpsychism illustrates a “selective” attribution pattern that attributes minds (or mentality) only to certain bodies, while Cavendishian panpsychism exhibits an “unrestricted” attribution pattern that attributes a mind to each and every body. These contrary views help to establish a taxonomy of mental attribution patterns that promises to inspire fresh theories of mind and liberatory configurations of the social. (shrink)

Researchers and activists are increasingly drawing on the practice of collecting, archiving, and sharing stories to advance social justice, especially given the low cost and accessibility of digital technologies. These practices differ in their aims and scope yet they share a common conviction: that digital storytelling is empowering especially when curating and disseminating life stories of marginalized groups. In this paper, I question this conviction and ask: is it possible that such practices take away from what is found to be (...) meaningful and worthwhile in practices of storytelling and listening, and, if so, how? To answer this question, I argue for a renewed attentiveness to story scenes, highlighting the inherently relational nature of storytelling and listening. I examine this relational nature through a fictional account that exemplifies storied encounters and demonstrates the ethical issues they entail through three themes—reciprocity, responsiveness, and communion—borne out of the plurality of philosophical positions on what it means to relate to another. I explain each of these themes as a starting point for thinking through how digital storytelling may be just, with implications for participatory methods in science and technology studies, design studies, and human-computer interaction inclusive of participatory design, co-design, ethnographic research, and participatory action research. (shrink)

This article offers a philosophical reading of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels by bringing the tetralogy into conversation with Jean-Paul Sartre’s phenomenological ontology. In addition to highlighting the striking similarities between Ferrante’s notion of smarginatura (‘dissolving margins’) and Sartre’s depiction of the existential sensation of nausea, this article argues that the two main characters of Ferrante’s tetralogy, Lila Cerullo and Elena Greco, respectively exemplify Sartre’s ontological categories of ‘being-for-oneself’ and ‘being-for-others’ in his phenomenological account of human existence. However, Ferrante—like Simone de (...) Beauvoir before her—goes beyond Sartre in her ability to offer an account of the imperfect existential freedom of women, who remain constrained in their pursuit of authenticity by social and cultural factors. Drawing on Ferrante’s assertion that readers ‘are both Elena and Lila’ as well as her recent claim that there are within her two kinds of writing (broadly equated to the ‘compliant’ Elena and ‘impetuous’ Lila), we establish Ferrante’s exploration of the ambivalent features of human subjectivity as a consummate philosophical and literary project. (shrink)

Who is feminism for? The question reverberates frightfully in feminist discourse. Despite decades of theorizing that the unified feminist subject is an impossibility (given differences in race, class, sexuality, etc.), the question remains all too relevant in praxis—much to the detriment of the movement as a whole. Or at least, so argues Éléonore Lépinard in her new book, Feminist Trouble: Intersectional Politics in Post-Secular Times.

Though the concepts of diversity and inclusion are still widely used in the contexts of management, policy-making, and academic research, the notion of superdiversity is becoming increasingly popular. First articulated by social anthropologist Steven Vertovec (see Vertovec, 2006; 2007; 2012), superdiversity has been described as a concept and theoretical tool that enables us to study our ever-evolving, globalising social reality in great detail by taking the enormous amount of diversity that exists within different groups in societies around the world into (...) account as well, in addition to differences between different groups. Superdiversity is mainly linked to the growing ethnic and cultural complexity of Western European societies, and is therefore often associated with the rise of so-called majority-minority- cities, such as Amsterdam, Brussels, and London, to name a few – all cities in which ethnic minority groups are about to replace (or have already replaced) the ethnic majority group (see, e.g., Crul, Schneider, & Lelie, 2013; Crul, 2016; Geldof, 2015). (shrink)

By tracing its own narrative from the feminist pragmatism of the 1980s-2000s back to the avant-la-lettre feminist pragmatism of the Progressive Era, this chapter explores the use of narrative within feminist pragmatism. It pays particular attention to uses of narrative in Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Anna Julia Cooper and Jane Addams to reveal the usefulness of narrative as a feminist pragmatist mode of inquiry and of elucidating meaning. The chapter concludes with a brief suggestion of where feminist pragmatist narrative may take (...) us next. (shrink)

Desde un enfoque multidisciplinar y plural, "Feminismo e identidades de género en Japón" reúne una colección de ensayos que permiten conocer los debates intelectuales del feminismo japonés contemporáneo, así como las vigentes discusiones sobre las identidades de género y las orientaciones sexuales en aquel país. Los temas tratados desvelan, por un lado, la riqueza de la historia y del presente del feminismo en Japón, tanto en la voz de pensadoras y activistas pioneras, como a través del giro colectivo y radical (...) que a mitad del siglo pasado percutió críticamente los roles de género en una sociedad atravesada, como tantas otras, por el patriarcado. Asimismo, en el istmo que conecta, pero también desplaza, la situación del siglo XX y el momento actual, el volumen pone el foco en asuntos controversiales como la lucha por la igualdad de trato y derechos en el colectivo homosexual, las tensiones legales y médicas en torno a las identidades de género, y la negociación y renegociación constantes de las subjetividades femeninas en la literatura y las producciones audiovisuales. Editado por Montserrat Crespín Perales (UB), el libro dibuja un tapiz con múltiples hilos que se ofrecen para pensar con y a través de las reflexiones y las tensiones que el feminismo y los estudios de género en Japón subrayan en una contemporaneidad volátil y desencajada, esperando enriquecer con ello las discusiones globales actuales. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: Cet article étudie deux contextes français dans lesquels les voiles musulmans sont devenus hypervisibles: le débat public qui a mené à la loi française de 2004 interdisant les signes religieux ostensibles dans les écoles publiques, et le projet colonial français de dévoiler les femmes algériennes. Je montre comment le concept de « l’oppression de genre » s’est naturalisé au voile musulman d’une telle manière qu’il justifie les normes de féminités occidentales et cache le mécanisme par lequel les femmes musulmanes (...) sont racialisées. C’est ainsi que le voile devient le point de mire d’un racisme culturel qui se présente comme libérant les femmes musulmanes, un racisme qui semble poser un dilemme au féminisme. -/- // ABSTRACT: This paper examines two French contexts in which Muslim veils have become hypervisible as centres of contention: the public debate that led to the recent French law banning conspicuous religious signs in public schools and the French colonial project to unveil Algerian women. I ask how the concept of gender oppression comes to be naturalized to the Muslim veil in such a way as to simultaneously justify Western norms of femininity and hide the process by which Muslim women are racialized. It is in this way, I argue, that the “veil” becomes the focal point for a form of cultural racism that presents itself as saving Muslim women, and that it can be construed to pose a dilemma to feminism. (shrink)

In this 2 1/2 page piece(ling) I introduce the terms 'to maleappropriate', 'maleappropriation', 'maleappropriator', etc., for a familiar phenomenon and pattern of behaviour, following a couple of autobiographical remarks and followed by some brief suggestions about how to handle the phenomenon. That's all. (Nothing of philosophical depth here.).

Often, when we are angry, we are angry at someone who has hurt us, and our anger is a protest against our perceived mistreatment. In these cases, its function is to hold the abuser accountable for their offense. The anger involves a demand for some sort of change or response: that the hurt be acknowledged, that the relationship be repaired, that the offending party reform in some way. In this paper, I develop and defend an account of a different form (...) of anger, called "outrage anger". Outrage anger does not aim to hold an abuser accountable, nor to demand repair or reform. Drawing on the work of Maria Lugones, I argue that outrage anger is directed at the state of affairs in which a violation is unintelligible to the dominant moral community. The central function of outrage anger is a psychological boundary setting: it closes off the victim’s ability to feel empathy for their abuser. Outrage has an important role to play in the context of political injustice, but that it also comes with significant costs. (shrink)

In 1976, Jo Freeman wrote an article for Ms. Magazine, entitled ‘Trashing: The Dark Side of Sisterhood’. It provoked an outpouring of letters from women relating their own experiences of trashing during the course of the second wave feminist movement—more letters than Ms. had received about any previous article. Since then, the technology has improved but the climate among feminists has not; trashing is now conducted on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, in front of ever-larger audiences and with (...) the magnified opportunities for destruction that these new platforms bring with them. Women already experience disproportionate harassment on social media; many feel trashing by other feminists to be much harder to accept. It’s one thing for people to hate feminists; resistance from those for whom a social justice movement represents a threat is par for the course. But it’s something else for feminists to hate each other. These are people with shared goals and a common enemy. What are the psychological mechanisms underlying this fact of life for feminist activists? Various explanations might be offered, from internalised misogyny, through volatility caused by histories of oppression, through envy and competitiveness, through ideological purity policing. Which are correct? Is the hatred that motivates trashing within feminism the same in quality and quantity, or different, from the affective dynamics inside other social movements? How does tribalism between warring feminist factions contribute to these dynamics, and to what extent is trashing underwritten by laudable moral goals (such as anti-elitism and anti-hierarchy) even when it goes too far or misfires? Can a liberation movement be successful without ideological purity policing, or is there a tension between achieving social justice outcomes and facilitating a healthy amount of disagreement and constructive criticism within a group? In this paper I’ll focus on potential explanations of the phenomena of trashing, including tribalism, power grabs, and purity policing; and the moral commitments that might lead feminists to trash each other. (shrink)

Can a person privileged in some respect understand what it is like to be disprivileged in that respect? Some say yes; some say no. I argue that both positions are correct, because ‘understand what it is like to be disprivileged’ is ambiguous. Sometimes, it means grasp of the character of particular experiences of disprivileged people. Privileged people can achieve this. Sometimes, it means grasp of the general character shared by experiences of disprivileged people. Privileged people cannot achieve this. However, there (...) is a general kind of understanding that they can achieve: understanding of why individual experiences have their character, in relation to privilege and disprivilege. This understanding is a skill, not knowledge. It is difficult and discomforting for the privileged to acquire and is easily conflated with knowledge of general experiential character. Distinguishing and characterizing these kinds of understanding clarifies whether, and how, the privileged might understand what it is like to be disprivileged. (shrink)

The question of how to arrive at a consensus on human rights norm in a diverse, pluralistic, and interconnected global environment is critical. This volume is a contribution to an intercultural understanding of human rights in the context of India and its relationship to the West. The legitimacy of the global legal, economic, and political order is increasingly premised on the discourse of international human rights. Yet the United Nations’ Declaration of Human Rights developed with little or no consultation from (...) non-Western nations such as India. In response, there has developed an extensive literature and cross-cultural analysis of human rights in the areas of African, East-Asian, and Islamic studies, yet there is a comparative dearth of conceptual research relating to India. As problematically, there is an lacuna in the previous literature; it simply stops short at analyzing how Western understandings of human rights may be supported from within various non-Western cultural self-understandings; yet, surely, there is more to this issue. The chapters in this collection pioneer a distinct approach that takes such deliberation to a further level by examining what it is that the West itself may have to learn from various Indian articulations of human rights as well. (shrink)

Feminist philosophers have challenged a wide range of gender injustices in professional philosophy. However, the problem of precarity, that is, the increasing numbers of contingent faculty who cannot find permanent employment, has received scarcely any attention. What explains this oversight? In this article, I argue, first, that academics are held in the grips of an ideology that diverts attention away from the structural conditions of precarity, and second, that the gendered dimensions of such an ideology have been overlooked. To do (...) so, I identify two myths: the myth of meritocracy and the myth of work as its own reward. I demonstrate that these myths—and the two-tier system itself—manifest an unmistakably gendered logic, such that gender and precarity are mutually reinforcing and co-constitutive. I conclude that feminist philosophers have particular reason to organize against the casualization of academic work. (shrink)

Recently, researchers have begun to empirically investigate the gender gap in philosophy and provide potential explanations for the underrepresentation of women in philosophy relative to their representation in other disciplines. This empirical research as well as research on the gender gap in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics fields has shed light on a priori, armchair explanations of the gender gap. For example, implicit bias and stereotype threat may contribute much less to the philosophy gender gap than previously thought. However, new (...) candidate contributing factors have emerged. Drawing on the theoretical resources concerning fixed mindsets in response to difficult tasks, a new theory suggests that practitioners in various fields, including philosophy, hold the belief that success in their fields requires natural brilliance. Further, the extent to which members of a field hold that belief predicts the diversity of the members of that field. Initial findings suggest that among the set of students who hold these beliefs, women are disproportionately disinterested in continuing in philosophy. Other hypotheses seem plausible, such as the idea that lay people hold gendered schemas about philosophy, but require more empirical support to be partial explanations. Future empirical research should focus on these plausible hypotheses, replications of previous findings, and investigating the effects of intersectionality within the gender gap. (shrink)

Luce Irigaray's argument that women need a feminine divine is placed in the context of her analyses of the interconnection between man's appropriation of woman as his “negative alter ego” and his identification with the impossible ego ideal represented by the figure of God. As an alternative, the “feminine divine” is conceived as a realm with which women would be continuous. It would allow mediation between humans, and interrupt cannibalizing appropriations of the other.

Details developments in feminist theory since 1970, with chapters on aspects such as feminist social theory, political theory, and jurisprudence, black feminisms, post-colonial feminist theory, lesbian theory, and feminist linguistic theories. Other topics include psychoanalytic feminist theory, postmodernism and feminism, feminist literary theory, feminist media and film theory, and women's studies. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

This collection of essays from some of America's leading feminist writers presents an outstanding picture of current American feminism, provides important suggestions for new research that will continue through the next century, and covers a broad range of subjects and evaluates how far American feminism has come in developing strategies for combining theory with practice. 12 halftones.

Dans cet ouvrage collectif, l'article de Guy Bouchard intitulé "Comment émasculiniser l' écriture philosophique" met d'abord en lumière le sexisme qui a caractérisé tant la philosophie que le langage en général; il s'interroge ensuite sur les façons "d'émasculiniser" l' écriture philosophique et au niveau de la pensée, et à celui du langage.

Reflections on the importance of epistemic nomadism for women and queers in the academy.

South African Philosopher, Abdullah Beni, writes his critique of neoliberalism from a feminist perspective. Abdullah Beni, who’s academic focus is on Ethics, political philosophy and feminist theory, writes an article expressing his philosophical views on contemporary issues. This article challenges the prevailing notion of feminist freedom rooted in individual choice, influenced by neoliberal ideology. While choice is integral, it argues for a broader perspective acknowledging systemic inequalities shaping women's options. Highlighting the flawed promises of neoliberalism, it discusses how economic disparities (...) and workplace discrimination hinder genuine choice. It advocates for policies promoting economic justice, workplace equality, and reproductive rights as essential for feminist freedom. Ultimately, it calls for collective action to dismantle barriers and create a society where all women have the genuine power to shape their lives. (shrink)

Nietzsche's remarks on ressentiment and power and Foucault's analytics of power form the backdrop to this chapter. My concern is with certain feminist discursive and non-discursive practices, primarily in those institutions in which feminists have achieved a degree of success-bureaucracy, educational institutions and the professions. The question is: in what strategies of power are these practices participating and with what conception of power are they operating?

In Women and Work: Feminism, Labour, and Social Reproduction, Susan Ferguson carefully maps a history of feminist thinking about work and makes a compelling case for the present need to grapple with the way compulsory work under capitalism affects women. She develops an integrated theory capable of addressing and explaining the ways in which anti-racist feminism is necessarily anti-capitalist, rather than holding patriarchy, racism and capitalism as separate systems. Ferguson draws upon multiple trajectories of feminist thought to situate and develop (...) a contemporary iteration of social reproduction theory (SRT) rooted in anti-oppressive politics. Carefully weaving together insights from anti-racist feminism and Marxism, Ferguson pushes SRT into new directions by complicating the traditional idea that unpaid housework is the shared condition of women under capitalism; rather, Ferguson elucidates how social reproductive work consists in activities involved in reproducing life, whether those activities are service work or child-rearing, paid or unpaid, or occurring within institutions, the workplace or within the home. -/- In the first section of the book, Ferguson traces a historical lineage of feminist thinking about work consisting in three trajectories: socialist feminism – including what she calls critical equality feminism – and liberal, rational-humanist forms of feminism. The second half of the book analyzes social reproduction theory.... (see more). (shrink)

The gray area of sexual violations generally refers to ambiguous sexual experiences that are not readily distinguishable from rape or sex. Such experiences are describable as ambiguous or complex in a way that, to some, seems to defy existent categories of sexual experiences. This leads some feminists to approach the gray area as a puzzle that must be resolved either by understanding it as a new category, or by upholding existing rape categorization. Rather than dispelling the gray-area ambiguity by resolving (...) conceptual puzzles, I assign the gray-area ambiguity a positive analytical role by attending to it in a historical and dialectical light. By tracing histories of feminist antirape discourse, I elaborate a way of understanding the “gray area” of sexual violations, articulating it as a historical condition affecting the interpretive possibilities of our sexual experiences. Such an approach underscores the potential of the gray area to inaugurate feminist critique in virtue of its status as a historically specific yet ambiguous horizon where our experiences can contradictorily seem not-like rape, but not-like sex. (shrink)

During the past two decades or so, the emergence and ever-accelerating development of digital media have sparked scholarly interest, debates, and complex challenges across many disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities. Within this diverse scholarship, the research on digitality, gender, sexuality, and embodiment has contributed substantially to many academic fields, such as media studies, sociology, religion, philosophy, and education studies. As a part of the special issue “Gender, Sexuality, and Embodiment in Digital Spheres: Connecting Intersectionality and Digitality,” this (...) roundtable consists of a conversation between five researchers from different (inter)disciplinary locations, all addressing matters of methodology, intersectionality, positionality, and theory in relation to the topics of gender, sexuality, and embodiment in digital spheres. Said roundtable begins with a critical self-positioning of the participants’ (inter)disciplinary and embodied locations using examples from their own research. The conversation then progresses to how these researchers have employed contemporary theories, conceptual vocabularies, methods, and analyses of gender, sexuality, and embodiment in digital spheres to then conclude with some ethico-political notes about collaborations between scholars and (digital) activists. (shrink)

BDSM is no longer treated as a manifestation of the darkest twists of the human soul but rather as a sexual activity like many others. Moreover, the philosophy of sex and much of popular culture has come to embrace BDSM for its models of consent, exploration, and freedom. Yet celebrating BDSM without deeper reflection can obscure some serious moral issues. In this chapter, I present an overview of the moral issues raised by BDSM, and I argue that it is reductive (...) to see BDSM as a simple or straightforward model for how to practice egalitarian sex. Yet, BDSM communities grapple with issues of consent, autonomy, and power in important ways, which can help us think through broader issues in sexual ethics. Either way, BDSM must be understood in its full complexity. (shrink)

This exciting new Handbook offers a comprehensive overview of the contemporary state of the field in feminist philosophy. The editors' introduction and forty-five essays cover feminist critical engagements with philosophy and adjacent scholarly fields, as well as feminist approaches to current debates and crises across the world. Authors cover topics ranging from the ways in which feminist philosophy attends to other systems of oppression, and the gendered, racialized, and classed assumptions embedded in philosophical concepts, to feminist perspectives on prominent subfields (...) of philosophy. The first section contains chapters that explore feminist philosophical engagement with mainstream and marginalized histories and traditions, while the second section parses feminist philosophy's contributions to numerous philosophical subfields, for example metaphysics and bioethics. A third section explores what feminist philosophy can illuminate about crucial moral and political issues of identity, gender, the body, autonomy, prisons, among numerous others. The Handbook concludes with the field's engagement with other theories and movements, including trans studies, queer theory, critical race, theory, postcolonial theory, and decolonial theory. The volume provides a rigorous but accessible resource for students and scholars who are interested in feminist philosophy, and how feminist philosophers situate their work in relation to the philosophical mainstream and other disciplines. Above all it aims to showcase the rich diversity of subject matter, approach, and method among feminist philosophers. (shrink)

My analysis on the category of signs of times (SoT) shows how it can help to explain a few aspects of synodality. I will explain how synodality and SoT support each other and why Synods should teach a correct judgment of SoT. It is a way to educate God's people to their theology. We may also wonder if in the anti-gender campaign the church was unable to implenaent the theological vision implied in the SoT. This campaign has highlighted the Church (...) weakness in accepting the world-church relations implied in SoT theology. This weakness due to a lack in education must be corrected re-launching the Synods' tasks and processes. (shrink)

Analytic philosophy has transgender trouble. In this paper, I explore potential explanations for this trouble, focusing on the notion of 'cisgender commonsense' and its place in philosophical methodology.

What’s important about ‘coming out’? Why do we wear business suits or Star Trek pins? Part of the answer, we think, has to do with what we call agential identity. Social metaphysics has given us tools for understanding what it is to be socially positioned as a member of a particular group and what it means to self-identify with a group. But there is little exploration of the general relationship between self-identity and social position. We take up this exploration, developing (...) an account of agential identity—the self-identities we make available to others. Agential identities are the bridge between what we take ourselves to be and what others take us to be. Understanding agential identity not only fills an important gap in the literature, but also helps us explain politically important phenomena concerning discrimination, malicious identities, passing, and code-switching. These phenomena, we argue, cannot be understood solely in terms of self-identity or social position. (shrink)

This paper presents new data on the representation of women who publish in 25 top philosophy journals as ranked by the Philosophical Gourmet Report for the years 2004, 2014, and 2015. It also provides a new analysis of Schwitzgebel’s 1955–2015 journal data. The paper makes four points while providing an overview of the current state of women authors in philosophy. In all years and for all journals, the percentage of female authors was extremely low, in the range of 14–16%. The (...) percentage of women authors is less than the percentage of women faculty in different ranks and at different kinds of institutions. In addition, there is great variation across individual journals, and the discrepancy between women authors and women faculty appears to be different in different subfields. Interestingly, journals which do not practice anonymous review seem to have a higher percentage of women authors than journals which practice double anonymous or triple anonymous review. This paper also argues that we need more data on academic publishing to better understand whether this can explain why there are so few full-time female faculty in philosophy, since full-time hiring and tenuring practices presumably depend on a candidate’s academic publishing. (shrink)

The discipline of academic philosophy suffers from serious problems of diversity and inclusion whose acknowledgement and amelioration are often resisted by members of our profession. In this paper, I distinguish four main modes of resistance—naiveté, conservatism, pride, and hostility—and describe how and why they manifest by using them as the basis for a typology of types of ‘resister’. This typology can hopefully be useful to those of us trying to counteract such resistance in ways sensitive to the different motives and (...) strategies that these resisters tend to employ. (shrink)

Not a few feminist writers, such as Kristeva, Irigaray, and Chodorow, have dealt with Freud’s psychoanalysis so far, but it is not clear to what degree the Freudian theory grounds their arguments, because Freud himself developed his psychoanalysis mainly for the male mental world (Seelenleben). In this paper, we shall follow Freud’s train of thought exclusively from this angle. After the geneses of Pcpt.-Cs., id, ego, and super-ego (W-Bw, Es, Ich, and Über-Ich, respectively) are treated (§§7-10), we shed light on (...) how these factors relate to the female spirituality (§§11-24) and why feminists could still rely on Freud’s thought (§25). On the other hand, the present research will also provide an easy introduction to Freud’s psychoanalysis, by reference to which each thinker could overview the Freudian theory (Fig. (5) and Fig. (8) will help). In this respect, we shall also take account of the masculine side of his discussion, that is to say, how a man usually develops his male personality, while we constantly put it in stark contrast to the female spirituality. Although, in this modern world, not a few thinkers criticize the Freudian theory as non-scientific like Popper did (§2), we should remember that there remain supporters of his theory, such as Grümbaum (§3). We shall touch on this kind of argument relating to philosophy of science in the first half of this paper, which will also provide some useful knowledge for the readers who still get doubtful of the Freudian theory and its usage in feminist arguments. (shrink)

Philosopher Christina Hoff Sommers's target inWho Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Womenis “gender feminism.” Her aim is to convince us that gender feminists are anti-intellectual opportunists who deliberately spread lies about the incidence of date rape (chap. 10), domestic battery (Preface, chap. 9) and about the general state of male-female relations in America (chaps. 1, 9 and 11), thereby generating fear and resentment of men (chap. 2), all so that they may secure vast amounts of government funding and high-paying (...) jobs in the academy (chaps. 4, 5 and 6). Because gender feminists are condescending to and contemptuous of the “average woman,” they lack a grass-roots constituency (p. 22). Nonetheless, they are powerful enough to be feared. Gender feminists have managed to dupe the U.S. Congress (chap. 8), and an otherwise sceptical press literally eats out of their hands (p. 15). Gender feminism is also a leading cause of the weakening of the American university (p. 52), and has “made the American campus a less happy place” (p. 112). (shrink)

The Blackwell Guide to Feminist Philosophy is a definitive introduction to the field, consisting of 15 newly-contributed essays that apply philosophical methods and approaches to feminist concerns. Offers a key view of the project of centering women’s experience. Includes topics such as feminism and pragmatism, lesbian philosophy, feminist epistemology, and women in the history of philosophy.

In this paper I examine third wave leminism in the hopes of shedding light on its relationship to the concurrent contemporary backlash against leminism. I investigate this by attempting to answer two questions. First, given the nature of the first and second waves, is the third wave appropriately so called? I tentatively conclude that it is not. Second, I ask whether the issue of identity, which is central to third wave analysis, is addressed well by third wavers. I suggest that (...) there are serious problems with the rejection of identity politics that characterizes much third wave feminism, particularly in the repudiation of second wave feminism that seems to accompany it. I conclude that, at best, the third wave seems unprepared to light the present backlash and, at worst, it appears to be a part of it. (shrink)