In "Amelioration and Inclusion: Gender Identity and the Concept of Woman," Katharine Jenkins argues that Sally Haslanger's focal analysis of gender problematically excludes nonpassing trans women from the category "woman." However, Jenkins does not explain why this exclusion contradicts the feminist aims of Haslanger's account. In this paper, I advance two arguments that suggest that a trans-inclusive account of "woman" is crucial to the aims of feminism. I claim that the aims of feminism are to understand and combat women's oppression. (...) First, I argue that denial of trans identities reinforces cultural ideas that perpetuate both transphobic violence and sexual violence against women. Consequently, a feminist account of "woman" that fails to respect trans identities indirectly contributes to the oppression of women. Second, I prove that nonpassing trans women are oppressed as women through the internalization of sexual objectification. I then conclude that an account of "woman" that excludes nonpassing trans women cannot successfully advance a complete understanding of women's oppression. (shrink)

The notion of politicization has been often assimilated to that of partisanship, especially in political and social sciences. However, these accounts underestimate more fine-grained, and yet pivotal, aspects at stake in processes of politicization. In addition, they overlook cognitive mechanisms underlying politicizing practices. Here, we propose an integrated approach to politicization relying on recent insights from both social and political sciences, as well as cognitive science. We outline two key facets of politicization, that we call partial indetermination and contestability, and (...) we show how these can be accounted for by appealing to recent literature in cognitive science concerned with abstract conceptual knowledge. We suggest that politicizing a concept often implies making its more abstract components more salient, hence legitimating its contestable character. Finally, we provide preliminary suggestions to test our proposal, using the concept of gender as case study. (shrink)

In 2013 the mayor's office of Bogotá organized the first ever Mujer T. The event, originally conceived as a beauty pageant, generated considerable controversy. Unexpectedly, however, most of the criticism came not from conservative groups, but from well-known cisgender feminist scholars who criticized the event from a traditional gender perspective. A heated debate about the needs, challenges, desires, and opportunities of trans women continued during the weeks prior to the event. The discussion played out through blogs, social media, and private (...) and public conversations. Nevertheless, although there was much talk about transwomen, there was little room for their voices. This article argues that because of the actors involved, the dynamics and content of the conversations, and the changes that took place in its aftermath, Mujer T 2013 highlights how trans people's bodies, expressions—whether related to gender, culture, or politics—and self-determination processes are intensely policed and contested, even by those whose explicit intent is to support and celebrate them. Therefore, understanding the dynamics of what happened around Mujer T 2013 has important lessons for the development of trans-inclusive policies and initiatives, feminist scholarship and practice, and institutional and societal change. (shrink)