This paper proposes a new category of linguistic harm: that of illocutionary frustration. I argue against Jennifer Hornsby and Rae Langton’s notion of illocutionary silencing by challenging their claim that silencing occurs when there is a lack of uptake of the speaker’s illocutionary act. I look at two scenarios that their view treats differently and argue that these scenarios warrant the same kind of analysis; Hornsby and Langton’s notion of silencing can’t capture the purported difference they want it to capture. (...) I propose that we should look instead to standing to explain the phenomenon that illocutionary silencing intends to explain. I explicate the role of standing in terms of illocutionary frustration, then consider street harassment as an example of a linguistic interaction that is best explained by my proposed view. (shrink)

RESUMEN El apetito rapaz de los conquistadores produjo sodomitas Indígenas en Abya Yala. Corrompió también sus entendimientos sobre vitalidad corporal. La violación convirtió una permeabilidad anal, que comunicaba varias formas de lo vital, en un acto de destitución socio-corporal. La permeabilidad carnal Indígena, y su transición, quedó signada como infrahumana. La colonialidad oculta esa condición infrahumana al confundir las movilidades transgéneros con todo tipo de disconformidad corporal. Al considerar la permeabilidad corporal como un índice de disidencia tanto cognitiva como sexual, (...) la modernidad configuró lo transgénero como un vínculo monstruoso entre la permeabilidad y el capacitismo. El legado de la colonialidad fusiona conceptualmente a los cuerpos infra y cuasi-humanos. Para desenredar esa confusión, este ensayo examina la materialidad ancestral de prácticas anales, ritos funerarios, y apariciones y danzas ceremoniales. Este materialismo decolonizante negocia la permeabilidad sobre el puente que se extiende entre, por un lado, las cosmologías Andinas y Mesoamericanas y, por otro, las corporalidades travesti y trans. Al introducir el marco de la colonialidad de lo transgénero, el ensayo coloca el pluralismo ontológico en el centro de los debates sobre los materialismos trans*. ABSTRACT The voracious lust of the conquest produced Indigenous sodomites in Abya Yala. Native peoples saw their understandings of bodily vitality interrupted. Rape turned anal permeability, which had once communicated various forms of life, into an act of bodily destitution. The permeability of Indigenous flesh, and its transition, was rendered non-human. Coloniality veils this infrahuman condition by mistaking transgender transitions for any nonconforming embodiment. By reading permeable bodies as gender nonconforming, modernity gives rise to monstrous and disabled embodiments. Thus, transgender emerges as the linchpin between ableism and permeability. The legacy of colonialism conflates near-human and infrahuman bodies. Moving away from this conflation, this writing examines the materiality of ancestral, nonwestern, anal practices, burial rites, ceremonial apparitions, and dances. This decolonizing materialism negotiates permeability over the bridge between, on the one hand, Mesoamerican and Andean cosmologies and, on the other, travesti and trans Latinx embodiments. Ultimately, the coloniarity of transgender framework that I develop centers ontological pluralism in the current conversations about trans* materialisms. (shrink)

:This essay explores the concept of the connected self-owner, which takes account of the metaphysical significance of relations among persons for persons’ capacities to be owners. This concept of the self-owner conflicts with the traditional libertarian understanding of the self-owner as atomistic or essentially separable from all others. I argue that the atomistic self cannot be a self-owner. A self-owner is a moral person with intentions, desires, and thoughts. But in order to have intentions, desires, and thoughts a being must (...) relate to others through language and norm-guided behavior. Individual beings require the pre-existence of norms and norm-givers to bootstrap their selves, and norms, norm-givers, and norm-takers are necessary to continue to support the self. That means, I argue, that the self who can be an owner is essentially connected. Next, I ask how humans become connected selves and whether that connection matters morally. I distinguish among those connections that support development of valuable capacities. One such capacity is the autonomous individual. I argue that the social connections that allow the development of autonomous individuals have moral value and should be fostered. On the basis of these two values, I argue that we can support at least two nonvoluntary obligations, one negative and one positive, that we can ground in our metaphysical essence as connected self-owners. (shrink)

We propose an externalist understanding of sex that builds upon extended and distributed approaches to cognition, and contributes to building a more just, diversity-sensitive society. Current sex categorization practices according to the female/male dichotomy are not only inaccurate and incoherent, but they also ground moral and political pressures that harm and oppress people. We argue that a new understanding of sex is due, an understanding that would acknowledge the variability and, most important, the flexibility of sex properties, as well as (...) the moral and political meaning of sex categorization. We propose an externalist account of sex, elaborating on extended and distributed approaches to cognition that capitalize on the natural capacity of organisms to couple with environmental resources. We introduce the notion of extended sex, and argue that properties relevant for sex categorization are neither exclusively internal to the individual skin, nor fixed. Finally, we spell out the potential of extended sex to support an active defense of diversity and an intervention against sex-based discrimination. (shrink)

There is no specific trans perspective on romantic love. Trans people love and do not love, fall in love and fall out of love, just like everyone else. Trans people inhabit different sexual identities, different relationship types, and different kinds of loving. When it comes to falling in love as or with a trans person, however, things can get more complicated, as questions of gender and sexual identity emerge. In a study by Blair & Hoskin from 2018, 87.5% of the (...) interviewed participants said they would not consider dating a trans person (Blair & Hoskin, 2018). Among those who were open to dating trans people, a pattern emerged: the subjects were disproportionately willing to date trans men but not trans women, even if this preference did not match their own sexual identity; for example, a woman who identifies as a lesbian may be open to dating a trans man but not a trans woman. This seems like a clash of sexual and gender identities: why are women who identify as lesbians willing to date men? This chapter aims to analyze this phenomenon: love between clashing sexual and gender identities – e.g., the love between a man, who identifies as being romantically interested in men, and a trans woman, – and thereby evaluates the limits of romantic love for trans people. Limits of love, in this chapter, are conceived of as normative restrictions on whom and how we love. By exploring cases of clashing sexual and gender identities in romantic love, this chapter analyzes how trans people’s opportunities for love are often limited. (shrink)

In this article, Bettcher argues that sexual attraction must be reconceptualized in light of transgender experience. In particular, Bettcher defends the theory of “erotic structuralism,” which replaces an exclusively other-directed account of gendered attraction with one that includes a gendered eroticization of self as an essential component. This erotic experience of self is necessary for other-directed gendered desire, where the two are bound together and mutually informing. One consequence of the theory is that the controversial notion of “autogynephilia” is rejected. (...) Another consequence is that the distinction between gender identity and sexual orientation is softened. (shrink)