Transgender Issues

This article examines representations of Mermaids, a charity that supports trans young people and their families, in the British press. Using corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis, we identify and chart patterns in reporting between Mermaids’ inception as a charity in 2015, and 2022, a turbulent year for both the charity and trans people in the UK more generally. The findings show that, in the early years, there is relatively little attention to Mermaids in the press. Where they are mentioned, the charity (...) is represented as a useful source of advice and support, and their service users as happy and united. However, 2018 represents a turning point, with increasingly negative and misleading portrayals of Mermaids coinciding with a rise in public interest and funding. By 2019, media interest in the charity has surged and the impression of Mermaids as a support group for families is supplanted by the image of a powerful, dangerous and controversial organisation. We argue that the increasingly excessive, negative and polarised reporting around Mermaids is a strategy for indirectly delegitimising and attacking the lives of trans young people themselves. In a burgeoning culture war, Mermaids is used as a weapon against the very people they seek to support. (shrink)

According to the ICD-11 and DSM-5, transgender people’s experienced gender is incongruent with their natal sex or gender and the purpose of gender affirming-healthcare (GAH) interventions is to reduce this incongruence. Vincent argues that this view is conceptually incoherent—the incoherence thesis—and proposes that the ICD and DSM should be revised to understand transgender people as experiencing a merely felt incongruence between their gender and their natal sex or gender—the feelings revision. I argue that (i) Vincent in fact gives us no (...) reason to believe the incoherence thesis and that (ii) we may want to resist the combination of the incoherence thesis and the feelings revision because this combination seems to imply that all transgender people have feelings that are misplaced and are, in an importance sense, incorrect or mistaken. I then give a fit-based account of how trans people’s experienced gender can be incongruent with their natal sex or gender and how GAH can reduce this incongruence. (shrink)

This paper explores the intersection between trans philosophy and philosophy of mind—two areas that have traditionally been treated as addressing fundamentally different questions. While philosophy of mind typically investigates the nature and workings of the mind, trans philosophy interrogates the nature of trans realities. As these realities include investigations into embodiment, mind-body relationships, and emotion, I suggest taking trans perspectives seriously in philosophy of mind. Drawing on recent developments in feminist philosophy of mind and critical approaches to philosophy of mind, (...) this paper argues that incorporating trans perspectives into philosophy of mind not only challenges the field’s lingering individualistic assumptions but also enriches its methodological scope. Trans perspectives foreground lived, socially-situated experiences that expose the limits of abstract, decontextualized theorizing in mainstream philosophy of mind. Building on the work of Bettcher, Marvin, Dembroff, Hale, and others, I suggest that trans philosophy of mind is not about reducing trans people to psychological case studies, but about rethinking core philosophical questions in the philosophy of mind—such as self-knowledge, embodiment, and perception—from within trans realities. These perspectives highlight the constitutive role of social structures, bias, and intelligibility in shaping mental life, resonating with arguments in feminist philosophy and critical phenomenology that mental states are socially embedded and normatively structured. Through examples, I illustrate how trans perspectives disrupt and expand conventional understandings of the mind. Ultimately, the paper argues that trans philosophy of mind contributes not only to a more inclusive and accurate philosophy of mind but also to the ongoing development and future possibilities of trans philosophy itself. (shrink)

Protection rackets are used by criminal organizations to secure power, wherein “protection” is offered to individuals for threats coming from the criminal organization itself. In this paper, I put forth the concept of a moral racket as a type of structural racket wherein social dominants exploit moral reputation to perpetuate systems of domination. A moral racket occurs when individuals forcefully position themselves as moral saints for moral issues that either don’t exist, or do, but were created by the wrongful actions (...) of these individuals themselves. Considering three real-world cases of moral rackets of white saviorism within nonprofits, elite philanthropy, and anti-LGBTQ legislation, I show how they are particularly pernicious instruments of oppression. Moral rackets do this by performing several key ideological functions, including creating a perception of legitimacy of systems of domination, undermining moral knowledge, thwarting attention from true sources of social problems, and blocking off avenues of resistance. (shrink)

What's Wrong with Stereotyping? offers a refreshing and accessibly written philosophical take on the ethics of stereotyping. Stereotyping is woven into every aspect of human experience: conversation, psychology, algorithmic systems, and culture. It relates to generalization and induction, core aspects of rationality. But when and why it is morally wrong to stereotype? This book tackles this deep and enduring puzzle. To solve it, philosopher Erin Beeghly delves into the relationship between stereotyping and another phenomenon, discrimination. Not only does stereotyping cause (...) discriminatory treatment, she argues, stereotyping can itself be discriminatory. This insight-that to stereotype is to discriminate-enables a novel philosophical methodology, which builds towards a theory of wrongful stereotyping by analyzing the lived experiences of marginalized groups and existing theories of wrongful discrimination. -/- Core chapters evaluate important ethical wrongs: failure to treat persons as individuals, disrespect, harm, prejudice, threats to freedoms, and failure to treat persons as equals. One finds that there is no "essence" of wrongful stereotyping, a single property or set of properties that all problematic cases share in common. Nor are the wrongs of stereotyping reducible to an elegant number, two or three. Instead, wrongful stereotyping is a messy normative kind characterized by clusters of wrong-making properties, including all the ones noted here (and perhaps more). Readers will come away with a radically pluralistic, open-ended theory of wrongful stereotyping that they can use to identify wrongful stereotyping in their own lives and our contemporary world. Filled with thought-provoking examples and models for social change, this book emphasizes the messiness of moral reality and the importance of looking to the past in order to understand the ethical perils of stereotyping. (shrink)

I discuss issues with what I see as a gender-neutral, cis-centric conception of gender equality that has come to dominate U.S. law, focusing on the law’s systematic failure to protect incarcerated trans women’s health and bodily integrity.

Previously proposed strategies for preventing hermeneutical injustices mostly take for granted the interests people have in various things about themselves being intelligible, and aim only to enable them to satisfy these interests. Historically, the pursuit of such strategies has been somewhat successful in preventing trans people from suffering hermeneutical injustices in their interactions with cis people. Yet the widespread anti-trans backlash of recent years has brought to the fore a number of limitations and previously unacknowledged downsides to trans people’s pursuit (...) of such strategies. Thankfully, the pursuit of such strategies is not the only way to go about preventing trans people from suffering hermeneutical injustices in their interactions with cis people. At least some such injustices can be prevented by instead doing away with some of the interests trans people have in certain things about themselves being intelligible to certain cis people, and thus with the possibility of those interests going unfairly unsatisfied. In particular, trans people can do away with some of those interests by meeting the needs which underly them for themselves. Such strategies are infrapolitical in the sense that because they largely play out within a marginalized group rather than between a marginalized group and a dominant group, they tend not to register on the radar of the dominant group. I argue that especially in the context of a backlash against a marginalized group by members of a dominant group, this is an important advantage to strategies of this previously untheorized sort. (shrink)

As I have explored elsewhere, the Birmingham Philosophy Guild, which my former students and I re-founded in 2012, is a team of community members who engage in theoretical discussion, support group self-cultivation, and community activism. To further promote the guild as a catalyst for progressive social change, the present article connects it to both the popular cultural phenomenon of the “X-Men” – to make the guild more appealing to students and laypeople – and to the cutting-edge contemporary French philosophy of (...) Étienne Balibar – to make the guild more appealing to professors and culture workers. Moreover, the article connects these low- and high-brow phenomena to each other as well, thereby illustrating the political relevance of the lower, as well as a weakness in the higher, pursuant to social justice activism today. (shrink)

This essay offers an in-depth view of sexism as a psychological, social, and political phenomenon and, in the process, highlights the resiliency of feminism as a social movement. Section 1 focuses on linguistic history: what the term “sexism” means and how it has changed over time. Section 2 analyzes the things in the world to which the label “sexism” refers, providing an overview of the multifaceted phenomenon from a social-scientific perspective. Section 3 considers an ameliorative framework for analyzing sexism. According (...) to this framework, the best concept of sexism will be maximally useful for resisting oppression and pursuing social justice. An ameliorative perspective reveals that debates about the nature of sexism are—and always have been—highly political: driven by conflicts about the purpose of feminism as a social movement, including what feminists are fighting against, as well as whom they should be fighting for. As a triad, these three frameworks recommend conceptualizing sexism as an intersectional phenomenon that targets people of all sexes and genders, pervasively shaping social and psychological life. (shrink)

This paper critically addresses the logics of exceptionality inherent to emerging regulations of the gender field, with a focus on Spain’s recent self-determination-based regulation of gender. To achieve this, it offers a biopolitical analysis of the concept of “public order” and its influence on gender governance, drawing parallels to Agamben’s concept of the state of exception and exploring the connections between contemporary regulations and the gendered public order of nineteenth-century France. Finally, it analyzes the exclusions and restrictions that the Spanish (...) trans law reserves for migrants, non-binary people, and minors, contributing to the ongoing discourse on the limitations to gender autonomy in contemporary Western societies. (shrink)

The discourse inside and outside of sport in Australia and abroad on the participation of transgender women in female sport focuses on the principles of fairness, equity and the safety of competitors. These concerns commonly materialise (with little evidence) labelling transgender women as ‘cheats’, dominating female sport, strategically being coached in collision sports to intentionally hurt opponents or fraudulently transitioning with the sole aim of competing in elite women’s sport. Our research examines the process by which the Australian Football League (...) (AFL) grappled with these competing narratives in developing a policy to permit the participation of transgender and gender diverse athletes in community and ‘elite’ competitions. It will be argued that the initial AFL process lacked consideration of the human rights of transgender women and did not provide the necessary resources required to ensure a safe and inclusive process for transgender women to engage with the AFLW competition. This article will also identify lessons which other sport governing organisations should heed in developing and implementing policies for the inclusion of transgender women in sport. (shrink)

In a previous paper entitled ‘Beyond Physiology: Embodied Experience, Embodied Advantage, and the Inclusion of Transgender Athletes in Competitive Sport,’ we claim that analyses of the inclusion or exclusion of transgender athletes in competitive sport must go beyond physiological criteria and incorporate the notions of embodied experience and embodied advantage. Our stance has recently been challenged as impractical and excessively exclusionary. In this paper, we address these challenges and build upon them to expand on the policy implications of our original (...) framework, highlighting that embodied experience and embodied advantage heavily influence athletic performance. We differentiate competitive fairness from justice to, with an emphasis on the inclusion of transgender women in competitive sport, formulate a justice-based argument for maximizing inclusion. Afterward, we identify ideal and nonideal policy recommendations connected to our analysis of embodied experience and embodied advantage. We ultimately advocate for a qualified inclusion that assesses potential residual (physiological and embodied) advantages while striving for justice and competitive fairness. (shrink)

Anchored in a decolonial framework, we understand race and gender as co-constructions of colonial modernity. Drawing on María Lugones’ concept of the colonial/modern gender system, we show that non-normative racialized trans subjects are pathologized through the imposition of a racial-colonial system of binary gender. We argue that coloniality, when adopted into the medical-psychiatric apparatus, takes shape as transnormativity: an individualized, medicalized form of trans identity which is rooted in a white, Western understanding of gender. Building on Jasbir Puar’s framework of (...) homonationalism and trans(homo)nationalism, and critiques of assimilationist queer politics through the lens of racial capitalism and anti-imperialism, we argue that trans(homo)nationalism is the absorption of transnormativity into the broader operations of state power, and see transnormativity as an extension of coloniality, operating as neo-colonialism. We argue that the political implications of trans(homo)nationalism include the sanctioning of violence against and the marginalization of non-normative and racialized trans subjects, and the continued imposition of a regime of racialized normative gendering. This assimilationist nationalist agenda is funneled through the for-profit medical-psychiatric apparatus wherein transition is co-opted into a curative, progress-based temporality. Looking to theorizations of trans temporality, we critique notions of linearity and futurity insofar as they bolster the deployment of racist, nationalist, imperialist state agendas. We articulate a vision for futurity grounded in a trans of color framework which resists assimilation into normativized gender, and call for truly radical futures for trans people which resist medicalized forms of trans identity which subscribe to the colonial, white, Western ideals of gender. (shrink)

This essay argues that trans philosophy - and perhaps philosophy more broadly - should be understood according to the interplay of social, material, and emotional circulations. It opens by bridging insights from underemployed library work during the COVID-19 pandemic with Sara Ahmed’s analysis of the circulation of emotions in relation to texts and archives. The first major section diagnoses Martha Nussbaum’s confusing analysis of “the new trans scholarship” to establish that trans philosophy is differentially circulated across the discipline of philosophy. (...) The second major section argues that trans philosophy can be understood through the interplay of four different circulations: (1) trans philosophy as creating a space; (2) trans philosophy as the trans question; (3) trans philosophy as the gender wars; and (4) trans philosophy as the trans cult. I conclude that trans philosophy is a field that has yet to clearly form as it continues to twist and multiply according to affect, professional dynamics, political intrigue, who gets thrown away, and who is granted the space, time, energy, and money to write and publish. (shrink)

We want to know what gender is. But metaphysical approaches to this question solely have focused on the binary gender kinds men and women. By overlooking those who identify outside of the binary–the group I call ‘genderqueer’–we are left without tools for understanding these new and quickly growing gender identifications. This metaphysical gap in turn creates a conceptual lacuna that contributes to systematic misunderstanding of genderqueer persons. In this paper, I argue that to better understand genderqueer identities, we must recognize (...) a new type of gender kind: critical gender kinds, or kinds whose members collectively destabilize one or more pieces of dominant gender ideology. After developing a model of critical gender kinds, I suggest that genderqueer is best modeled as a critical gender kind that destabilizes the ‘binary axis’, or the piece of dominant gender ideology that says that the only possible genders are the binary, discrete, exclusive, and exhaustive kinds men and women. (shrink)

The need for gender recognition is widespread, even when hypervisibility and other effects of trans antagonism make that need dangerous for trans people. This reason partially accounts for why, in trans critique, recognition is a dirty word. As a political aim, and to some extent as a moral norm, trans critiques encourage dropping recognition. On the other hand, social philosophers often view recognition as a solution to misrecognition and take recognition to be a remedy for injustice. In my view, recognition (...) should neither be dropped nor held as a foundational norm for trans emancipation. First, I present three ways trans recognition is ambivalent. Second, evaluating Axel Honneth’s observations about the entwinement of recognition and domination, I argue that recognition is an ambivalent norm for trans critique and struggle. Third, I propose studying trans recognitive practices (rather than recognition in abstract) and I illuminate what might set trans/t4t recognition acts apart from their cis-grounded analogues, centering the roles of the body and space/place as resources of trans/t4t recognitive practices, and how such practices focus on the subject’s change and becoming over their identification. (shrink)

How should we make sense of pregnancy discrimination as an issue of gender equality? In a striking 1974 decision, Geduldig v. Aiello, the U.S. Supreme Court has answered that we simply cannot. Pregnancy discrimination does not constitute a form of sex discrimination prohibited by law, the 6–3 decision claims, because differential treatment based on pregnancy draws only a gender-neutral line between “pregnant women” and “nonpregnant persons,” not the gender line between women and men. While courts have since invoked Geduldig to (...) curtail both reproductive and transgender rights, the prevailing feminist response to this line of cases is still to double down on an awkwardly cissexist conception of gender, finding the sex discrimination in the “direct” way that pregnancy is thought to connect to womanhood. The failure of that prevailing feminist response, legitimizing rather than challenging biological essentialism in legal analysis and public discourse, epitomizes a broader failure of feminist analysis and intersectional solidarity: it fails to confront the political and social problem that is pregnancy discrimination for either cis or trans people. This essay offers a trans feminist alternative. I argue that pregnancy discrimination is discrimination on the basis of sex, within the legally relevant meaning of that phrase, not because pregnancy is in one way or another distinctive to women as a gender category but because pregnant persons make up a gender category of their own. On my analysis, pregnancy discrimination comes out as a form of sex discrimination directly and immediately, not by way of womanhood. (shrink)

Recently, the concept of "gender identity" has enjoyed a great deal of attention in gender metaphysics. This seems to be motivated by the goal of creating trans-inclusive theory, by explaining trans people's genders. In this paper, we aim to unmotivate this project. Notions of "gender identity" serve important pragmatic purposes for trans people, such as satisfying the curiosity of non-trans people, and, relatedly, securing our access to important goods like legal rights and medical care. However, we argue that this does (...) not mean that "gender identity" is a metaphysically substantial thing that deserves extensive theoretical attention. There are reasons to be skeptical of such a concept. We trace the history of "gender identity," primarily to identify its roots in trans-antagonistic medical theory and its connections to the problematic "wrong-body" model--a legacy that has pathologized and flattened trans experience. Moreover, we argue that trans people primarily use "gender identity" to explain ourselves to non-trans people, rather than to discuss ourselves among ourselves. Thus, we urge theorists to resist the urge to substantiate gender identity. Instead, we encourage the development of new and better concepts, ones that attend to the lived realities of trans community and the flourishing gender terms and practices that are constructed there. If these lived realities are taken seriously, there is no need to “explain” trans people’s genders; we can simply see them as they are. (shrink)

Transgender and gender diverse (TGD) youth are currently being targeted by global anti-trans legislation that would prevent their access to gender-affirming care even by healthcare providers willing to deliver it and who understand the importance of this support. It has been suggested in some studies that transness in young people is a result of peer contagion. As such their free will, authenticity and autonomy could be brought into question when accessing gender-affirming care. It is important to explore the relevance of (...) these concepts concerning the provision of gender-affirming care to TGD youth by nurses and other healthcare professionals. Nurses should challenge the notion held by some that these young people are not capable of knowing themselves or the level of treatment they require. They can do this by practising gender-affirming care determined by aspirational ethical values of beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy and justice. (shrink)

Gender dysphoria is typically construed as a medical concept. This understanding of gender dysphoria reflects how cisgender people interpret trans experience. This essay proposes an alternative concept of gender dysphoria for critical theory: on this account, gender dysphoria is alienation from cisgender forms of life. If the medicalized concept of gender dysphoria tacitly takes for granted, identifies with, and thereby reinforces cisgender patriarchal society, a critical theory of gender dysphoria instead approaches the issue from the perspective of trans people, their (...) lived experiences and social situation, to offer a critique of society. While the medicalized concept of gender dysphoria refers to a “distress” caused by living in the “wrong-body,” the critical concept of gender dysphoria refers to an alienation as a result of living in the “wrong (cisgender patriarchal) society.” The critical concept of gender dysphoria may become a tool capable of describing the necessary facets of trans experience necessary to form a political coalition. The paper concludes by claiming that trans subjects are the gendered analogue of Marx’s concept of the proletariat. (shrink)

"The Transgender Studies Reader Remix assembles 50 previously published articles to orient students and scholars alike to current directions in the fast-evolving interdisciplinary field of transgender studies. The volume is organized into ten thematic sections on trans studies' engagements with feminist theory, queer theory, Black studies, science studies, Indigeneity and coloniality, history, biopolitics, cultural production, the posthumanities, and intersectional approaches to embodied difference. It includes a selection of highly-cited works from the two-volume The Transgender Studies Reader, more recently published essays, (...) and some older articles in intersecting fields that are in conversation with where transgender studies is today. Editors Susan Stryker and Dylan McCarthy Blackston provide a foreword, an introduction, and a short abstract of each article that, taken together, document key texts and interdisciplinary connections foundational to the evolution of transgender studies over the past 30 years. A handy overview for scholars, activists, and all those new to the field, this volume is also ideally suited for use as a textbook in undergraduate or graduate courses in gender studies"--. (shrink)

There have now been a few attempts in trans theory to give an account of trans epistemology (see Radi 2019; Meadow 2016; and Dickson 2021). I will suggest that despite an admirable goal—that of giving an epistemology that provides a methodologically radical and distinctively trans break from other contemporary epistemological theory—thus far no account has been successful. Instead, I suggest that, in the absence of a more satisfactory radical account of trans epistemology, we can think of trans epistemology as a (...) methodologically moderate (though politically radical) extension of mainstream epistemology. (shrink)

Longstanding philosophical debate over the semantics of proper names has yet to examine the distinctive behavior of deadnames, names that have been rejected by their former bearers. The use of these names to deadname individuals is derogatory, but deadnaming derogates differently than other kinds of derogatory speech. This paper examines different accounts of this behavior, illustrates what going views of names will have to say to account for it, and articulates a novel version of predicativism that can give a semantic (...) explanation for this derogation. (shrink)

Provides a brief account of trans philosophy organizing in the 2010s and argues for the importance of building spaces for trans philosophers.

This section includes eighty-six short original essays commissioned for the inaugural issue of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. Written by emerging academics, community-based writers, and senior scholars, each essay in this special issue, “Postposttranssexual: Key Concepts for a Twenty-First-Century Transgender Studies,” revolves around a particular keyword or concept. Some contributions focus on a concept central to transgender studies; others describe a term of art from another discipline or interdisciplinary area and show how it might relate to transgender studies. While far from (...) providing a complete picture of the field, these keywords begin to elucidate a conceptual vocabulary for transgender studies. Some of the submissions offer a deep and resilient resistance to the entire project of mapping the field terminologically; some reveal yet-unrealized critical potentials for the field; some take existing terms from canonical thinkers and develop the significance for transgender studies; some offer overviews of well-known methodologies and demonstrate their applicability within transgender studies; some suggest how transgender issues play out in various fields; and some map the productive tensions between trans studies and other interdisciplines. (shrink)

The transgender population generally faces rights violations and discrimination in their day-to-day lives, which was exacerbated during the recent pandemic. This necessitates close scrutiny from an ethics perspective. Following directives from a 2014 Supreme Court judgement, Kerala became the first Indian state to implement a comprehensive policy to enforce the constitutional rights of transgender people. Despite such positive actions, a basic social tendency not to respect gender diversity has led to discrimination and marginalization. This was very evident during the pandemic. (...) In this empirical work, we have documented the lives of the transgender community during the pandemic wherein they share experiences related to livelihood, interaction with the healthcare system, and acceptance in society vis-à-vis the pandemic. Simply providing third-gender status will not help the gender-marginalized community to grow to their fullest potential and have a better lifestyle on par with others in mainstream society. (shrink)

The paper is structured as follows. First, I will single out three salient moments of trans philosophy, drawing on both my own experience as a trans person and the various attempts to theorize transness as laid out by Talia Mae Bettcher's "Trapped in the Wrong Theory". From there, I will extrapolate three ways to see the relationship between logic and trans philosophy, and provide for each some examples of both current and possible future work. Finally, in analogy with the literature (...) on feminist logic, I will attempt to address the further question of what trans logic could be, as a discipline and a system. (shrink)

In conversation with Emmett Harsin Drager and Andrea Long Chu's “After Trans Studies,” this collaborative essay also turns to questions of field formation and the ethos of trans studies. Situating the growth of the field in the material conditions of precarity under which trans knowledge-workers work, the authors argue that trans studies can't be “over” because, in fact, it isn't yet here. Rather than viewing this as only a dismal proposition, however, they insist that the tenuousness of trans studies provides (...) us with the opportunity to envision and enact more sustaining ways of being “in the field.”. (shrink)

In this short essay I connect Perry Zurn’s work on curiosity with trans history, activism, and art to bridge trans curiosity with eco curiosity in the form of transecological curiosity. I discuss examples from trans art, literature, music, and ecopoetics.

This essay offers a uniquely feminist interpretation of Book III in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics by examining the relevance of Aristotle's ethical framework to modern intersectional debates. I begin with an analysis of Aristotle's distinctions between involuntary, voluntary, mixed, and nonvoluntary actions, along with his nuanced discussion of ignorance. I then examine the implications of these concepts in contemporary social issues, and emphasize their potential to make intersectionality more accessible and fostering a constructive dialogue on prejudice. These concepts are then applied (...) through a modern lens to reveal the blameworthy and inexcusable nature of conservative ignorance towards intersectional issues in our current socio-political landscape. I assert that Aristotle provides a framework for intersectional feminists to address socio-political ignorance and discrimination, and argue for the importance of evaluating beliefs and actions to ensure their positive contribution to ones character. (shrink)

Our gender identity is our sense of ourselves as a woman, a man, as genderqueer, or as another gender. Our gender is the property we have of being a woman, being a man, being non-binary, or being another gender. What is the relationship between our gender identity and our gender? Recently, much work has been done on ameliorative accounts of the gender concepts that we should accept and on the metaphysics of gender properties. From this work 4 views of the (...) relationship between having gender identity G (e.g. having a female gender identity) and being a gender G (e.g. being a woman) have emerged. A first, the no connection view, says that gender identity and gender are entirely distinct; Sally Haslanger’s ameliorative account of gender, as well as Theodore Bach’s account of gender properties, are instances of this view. A second, the gender-identity-first view, says that all there is to our gender is our gender identity; this view is at least similar to views that Talia Bettcher and R.A. Briggs and B.R. George have argued for. A third, contextualist view, says that in some contexts and relative to certain standards, our gender identity determines our gender, and that in others it does not; Ásta and Robin Dembroff have proposed and defended views along these lines. A fourth view, the two gender properties view, says that there are two properties that can make it the case that one is gender G (in any context), one’s having gender identity G and one’s being socially classed as a G; Katharine Jenkins and Elizabeth Barnes have proposed views along these lines. This article explains these 4 different views and spells out their prospects, and the problems they face, as both ameliorative and as metaphysical views. (shrink)

This paper centers two complementary theoretical approaches to advance the debate about transgender women’s inclusion in elite women’s sports – namely, non-ideal theory and cultural studies. In doing so, the paper highlights divisions between ideal theory and non-ideal theory, normative internalism in sports and normative externalism in sports, and essentialist views of sports compared to non-essentialist views of sports. The paper’s main agenda is to show the value of applying non-ideal theory, externalism, and non-essentialism to the discourse over transgender inclusion.

As secular culture exerts pressure on Catholic health care to conform to its standards, there is need for a clear response to those who claim that the body is not constitutive of the person but can be manipulated to suit a subjective view of the self. Patients who suffer from gender dysphoria deserve our compassionate support, but "therapies" that carry out or encourage the destruction of one's natal sexuality are contrary to the Christian tradition and to the teachings of the (...) Catholic Church. This book provides the arguments, evidence, and practical advice needed for Catholic health care to resist this ideology and courageously affirm the biological reality of the person. Through careful analysis, narrative case studies, and policy language, Transgender Issues in Catholic Health Care critiques current interventions for gender dysphoria and provides practical guidance for professionals and institutions committed to providing whole-person care. -- Provided by publisher. (shrink)

The idea of transgender identity is less perceived as a mental illness but as a sexual health condition in many parts of the Western world, while it is seen as an anomaly in most parts of Africa. Transgender identity is a gender expression that differs from the naturally assigned sex. The widely accepted reason behind transgender is unsatisfactory feelings toward assigned sex by the individual. This work sets out to explore transgender identity and family life in Africa. Several works have (...) explored the concept but with less emphasis on family life as it relates to the African setting. Furthermore, this work sets out to demonstrate some implications of transgender identity in an ideal African family. In this work, we shall argue that once transgender identity is normalized in Africa, it will be a threat to family life. The arguments to be used are historical, analytical, descriptive as well as evaluative. (shrink)