Catharine MacKinnon has argued that the stance of objectivity is a male stance and, more specifically, a stance of objectification: “to look at the world objectively is to objectify it.” This chapter develops an interpretation of MacKinnon's account of gender and objectification to determi... see more

This chapter explores the concept of social construction and to show how debates over such philosophical notions as “truth”, “knowledge,” and “reality”, can be relevant to feminist and anti-racist politics: does it make sense to claim that there is a “male reality”? What would that mean? T... see more

Is there a place within feminist inquiry for metaphysics? If we take an aporematic approach to metaphysics, then what questions we ask, and what puzzles arise, is going to depend on cultural and historical context, broader theoretical needs, etc. Where sexist and racist views are widely he... see more

This chapter proposes social constructionist accounts of gender and race. The foci of the inquiry—an inquiry aiming to provide resources for feminist and antiracist projects—are the social positions of those marked for privilege or subordination by observed or imagined features assumed to ... see more

Much of contemporary analytic epistemology has been concerned with the semantics of claims to know. For the most part, feminist epistemology pursues different questions about knowledge. The chapter argues that are there alternative ways of undertaking an analysis of knowledge on which femi... see more