Marilyn Frye's first book, The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory, presents nine philosophical lectures: four on women's subordination, four on resistance and rebellion, one on revolution. Its approach combines a lesbian perspective with analytical philosophy of language. The major contributions of the book are its analysis of oppression, highly suggestive discussions of the roles of attention in knowledge and ignorance and in arrogance and love, a defense of political separatism not based on female supremacism, and a development of (...) the idea of lesbian epistemology. Its proposal for resisting White racism will be controversial. Its treatment of gay rights is not balanced by an acknowledgement that drag queens, like “totaled women,” are products of oppression, not simply of intolerance. The most philosophically problematic aspect of the book is its analysis of coercion and of the roles of coercion in women's subordination. This creates an unresolved tension with the positive message of the second half of the book. Despite this difficulty, these essays are an outstanding contribution to contemporary feminist theory. (shrink)

In Barclay's Bank v. O'Brien(1993) the House of Lords extended the undue influence rules to heterosexual and homosexual cohabitees, a move that was widely welcomed and has been endorsed in Royal Bank of Scotland v. Etridge (No. 2) (2001). The paper argues that the extension to homosexual couples is inappropriate, since undue influence is largely a problem of heterosexuality. It is not accidental that there have been no reported cases of undue influence between lesbian or gay partners, not because abuses (...) of power do not occur within such relationships, but because they are free of the central causal factor of undue influence: not intimacy per se but the gendered power dynamic within heterosexual intimacy that has characterised almost all reported cases. The first part of the paper examines the courts' treatment of gay and lesbian couples in other areas of equity and concludes that the absence of gender role assumptions leads courts to treat lesbian and gay claimants more equitably than they do heterosexual women. The second part focuses on the potential for gay and, especially, lesbian relationships to act as models of more egalitarian relationships than heterosexual ones. The dominant discourse of inclusion within the gay and lesbian legal lobby is problematised, and the paper concludes that what is needed is social and judicial recognition of what is different, not what is the same, about our relationships. (shrink)

The central question of the paper is: do women have the right to exclude transwomen from women-only spaces? First I argue that biological sex matters politically, and should be protected legally—at least until such a time as there is no longer sex discrimination. Then I turn to the rationales for women-only spaces, arguing that there are eight independent rationales that together overdetermine the moral justification for maintaining particular spaces as women-only. I address a package of spaces, including prisons, changing rooms, (...) fitting rooms, bathrooms, shelters, rape and domestic violence refuges, gyms, spas, sports, schools, accommodations, shortlists, prizes, quotas, political groups, clubs, events, festivals, and terms. The arguments of these two sections taken together make a strong case against self-identification as the basis for legal sex (because legal sex will generally determine inclusion). In the last part of the paper, I address the objection that my conclusion was obtained through linguistic sleight of hand, which I answer by saying that choices about how to refer to transwomen don’t change the underlying fact that the basis for exclusion is generally sex, not gender identity. (shrink)