Using Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness as an inspirational backdrop, a novel whose story unfolds on a genderless planet that nevertheless relies on reproductive sex for the sake of generativity, this paper tackles the sex/gender debate, its entanglements with procreation, and its consequences for transgender pregnancies. More specifically, I analyze three issues that pose barriers to thinking about a more inclusive reproductive ethics: state-sanctioned sterilization, non-reproductive futurism, and access to assisted reproductive technology.

In both popular and scholarly discussions, sexual consent is gaining traction as the central moral consideration in how people should treat one another in sexual encounters. However, while the concept of consent has been indispensable to oppose many forms of sexual violence, consent-based sexual ethics struggle to account for the phenomenological complexity of sexual intimacy and the social and structural pressures that often surround sexual communication and behavior. Feminist structural critique and social research on the prevalence of violation even within (...) consensual sex suggest that consent is insufficient to ground responsibility; a more fundamental orientation toward the value of sexual agency provides a better foundation for sexual ethics. Using feminist critical theory, phenomenology, and black feminist thought, this dissertation develops a socially situated and relational notion of sexual agency and diagnoses how such agency is neglected in prevailing discussions of consent in moral philosophy and legal theory. I argue that the ethical question of responsibility to another in a sexual encounter—apart from juridical considerations—should be reframed around the value of each person’s socially situated practices of agency. Preceding and extending beyond the obligation to gain valid consent for an action, responsibility demands adapting one’s intentions and behaviors in response to the wider range of another’s communicative expressions of agency. However, communicative expressions can be ambiguous or overdetermined by social context and cultural norms; they often offer only provisional traces of agency. To address this inherent uncertainty in intimacy, I propose drawing on insights from Emmanuel Levinas about the dynamic, open-ended nature of relationality, responsibility, and communication. Responsibility toward another does not depend on securing certainty about their “yes” or “no,” but requires responding continuously under conditions of uncertainty and ambiguity, adapting behaviors and intentions to make room for another’s agency despite its opacity. (shrink)

The topic of the self has long been salient in feminist philosophy, for it is pivotal to questions about personhood, identity, the body, and agency that feminism must address. In some respects, Simone de Beauvoir's trenchant observation, "He is the Subject, he is the Absolute — she is the Other," sums up why the self is such an important issue for feminism. To be the Other is to be the non-subject, the non-person, the non-agent — in short, the mere body. (...) In law, in customary practice, and in cultural stereotypes, women's selfhood has been systematically subordinated, diminished, and belittled, when it has not been outright denied. Since women have been cast as lesser forms of the masculine individual, the paradigm of the self that has gained ascendancy in U.S. popular culture and in Western philosophy is derived from the experience of the predominantly white and heterosexual, mostly economically advantaged men who have wielded social, economic, and political power and who have dominated the arts, literature, the media, and scholarship. Responding to this state of affairs, feminist philosophical work on the self has taken three main tacks: (1) critique of established views of the self, (2) reclamation of women's selfhood, and (3) reconceptualization of the self to incorporate women's experience. This entry will survey feminist perspectives on the self from all three of these angles. (shrink)

Tämä artikkeli on ensimmäinen suomenkielinen, vertaisarvioitu artikkeli queer-bioetiikasta.[1] Sen on tarkoitus johdattaa queer-bioeettiseen ajatteluun ja innostaa queer-bioeettiseen tutkimukseen. Sen yleisfilosofisempi päämäärä on herättää kysymyksiä sukupuolen ja seksuaalisuuden bioetiikan normatiivis-moraalisista perusteista ja seurauksista. Miten queer-bioetiikan avulla voidaan kyseenalaistaa cis- ja heteronormatiivisuus hyvän elämän välttämättömänä ehtona sekä medikalisoituna merkitysjärjestelmänä? Artikkeli lähestyy tätä kysymystä polkuja raivaten ja mahdollisuuksia kartoittaen. Artikkelissa pohditaan lisäksi queer-bioetiikan suhdetta muuhun tutkimuskenttään sekä sukupuolen ja seksuaalisuuden moninaisuuden kysymysten asemaa bioetiikassa. Kansainvälisesti tarkasteltuna homo-, lesbo- ja queer-tutkimus sekä trans- ja intersukupuolentutkimus (...) ovat pyrkineet kyseenalaistamaan bioeettistä ymmärrystä sukupuolen ja seksuaalisuuden normatiivisuudesta vuosikymmenten ajan. Esimerkiksi kysymykset transsukupuolisten henkilöiden sterilisaatiopakosta ja intersukupuolisten lasten ruumiillisesta koskemattomuudesta ovat vakiinnuttaneet asemansa julkisessa keskustelussa vasta viime vuosina. Artikkelin tavoite on osallistua aktivisti- ja kokijanäkökulmien nostamiseen pysyväksi osaksi suomalaista bioeettistä ja yleistä eettis-filosofista tutkimuskenttää. [1] Lance Wahlertin ja Autumn Fiesterin teorian tarkoittamassa mielessä. Suomessakin on toki aikaisemmin tehty LHBTQI-tutkimusta samoihin kysymyksiin liittyen. (shrink)