A comienzos de 2017 Rebecca Tuvel publicó un texto intitulado In Defense of Transracialism; este texto defendía que las razones que tenemos para aceptar la transgeneridad/transexualidad deberían, llevarnos a aceptar a la transrracialidad como posibilidad dado que tanto la ontología del género como la de la raza compartían dos elementos fundamentales: la autoidentificación y el etiquetamiento por parte de terceros. En el presente trabajo se cuestiona la validez de esta extrapolación al señalar que ésta conduce a análisis metafísicos y políticos (...) que ignoran tanto la historicidad como la materialidad que caracterizan a las diversas categorías así homologadas. De allí que aquí se cuestione críticamente cierta tendencia que ha igualado diversas ontologías sociales, por un lado, mientras que, por otro, se enfatizan otros abordajes metafísicos que no incurren en estas problemáticas. (shrink)

Black mothers often are responsible for teaching their children how to respond to police violence. Through 30 in-depth interviews with black mothers from diverse social class backgrounds, I investigate how they address the gendered racial vulnerability of their children in the “police talk,” a socialization practice designed to prepare children for police encounters. I identify mothers’ primary discourse as “the making it home” framework, which encapsulates in parent–child socialization their use of double consciousness around the police. This framework marginalizes girls’ (...) experiences in three ways: it conceptualizes boys as the primary targets of police, while constructing girls as collateral targets of police violence; it emphasizes masculine forms of violence; and it is directed almost exclusively at boys. An intersectional analysis is applied to redress the limitations of the police talk and to highlight the need for structural reforms to recognize and combat police violence against black women and girls. (shrink)

The notion of vulnerable groups has gained relevance in international legal instruments while being criticised in philosophical literature for its disabling potential and disempowering consequences. The article argues that the category of group vulnerability should not be abandoned, being an opportunity for resistance, visibility, and a place for dissent: vulnerable groups can both function as a sounding board for claims and make demands for recognition, resetting the political agenda and the topics of public debate, and allow the level of collective (...) needs to emerge from the level of individual interests, thereby guaranteeing a fairer distribution of resources. For this purpose, the article provides two definitions of group vulnerability that avoid both the risks of essentialism and of labelling outcomes. The article also analyses the political value of vulnerable groups, highlighting that it is conceivable as an enabling condition, a source of political agency and mobilisation. (shrink)

One of the challenges facing complex democratic societies marked by deep normative disagreements and differences along lines of race, gender, sexuality, culture and religion is how the perspectives of diverse individuals and social groups can be made effectively present in the deliberative process. In response to this challenge, a number of political theorists have argued that empathetic perspective-taking is critical for just democratic deliberation, and that a well-functioning democracy requires the cultivation in citizens of empathetic skills and virtues. In this (...) paper, we begin by distinguishing several kinds of imaginative projection and corresponding kinds of empathy. On the basis of this analysis, we suggest that genuine empathetic perspective-taking, especially across gendered, racial and embodied differences, is more challenging than is often assumed in the literature. This poses a dilemma for theorists who place great store on the role of empathetic imagination to overcome the challenges of democratic deliberation. On the one hand, placing responsibilities for empathetic perspective-taking primarily on the socially privileged raises risks of inaccurate and inappropriate projection. On the other hand, mitigating the risks of projection by calling on the socially marginalised to articulate their experiences and feelings in a way that can engage the imagination of the socially privileged, risks perpetuating epistemic injustice. We suggest that while this dilemma may be difficult to overcome, its effects can nevertheless be mitigated through both the cultivation of individual deliberative virtues and pragmatic institutional responses. (shrink)

The past decades’ substantial growth in globalized meat consumption continues to shape the international political economy of food and agriculture. This political economy of meat composes a site of contention; in Brazil, where livestock production is particularly thriving, large agri-food corporations are being challenged by alternative food networks. This article analyzes experiential and experimental accounts of such an actor—a collectivized pork cooperative tied to Brazil’s Landless Movement—which seeks to navigate the political economy of meat. The ethnographic case study documents these (...) livestock farmers’ ambiguity towards complying with the capitalist commodification process, required by the intensifying meat market. Moreover, undertaking an intersectional approach, the article theorizes how animal-into-food commodification in turn depends on the speciesist logic, a normative human/non-human divide that endorses the meat commodity. Hence the article demonstrates how alternative food networks at once navigate confines of capitalist commodification and the speciesist logic that impels the political economy of meat. (shrink)

Research on the U.S. women’s movement has documented the difficulties of cross-racial work between White women and women of racial/ethnic minorities. Less understood is how racial/ethnic minorities do cross-racial work among themselves to construct a collective identity of “women of color” that encourages solidarity across race, class, and other statuses. Drawing on research from the reproductive justice movement, I examine how women of color organizations that strive for intersectional praxis negotiate sameness and difference. I identify two different logics at work (...) within women of color organizations: the first relies on a presumption of “same difference” that emphasizes similar experiences of gender and race oppression; the second accords greater recognition to the “difference-in-sameness” that structures constituents’ lived experiences. While the former can reproduce precisely those forms of silencing and exclusion that women of color organizations seek to challenge, the second remains a ongoing process. The article concludes that women of color organizations must strive continuously to actively negotiate, rather than assume, commonality if they are to avoid reproducing various forms of marginalization and inequality. (shrink)

: The coloniality of power is understood by Anibal Quijano as at the constituting crux of the global capitalist system of power. What is characteristic of global, Eurocentered, capitalist power is that it is organized around two axes that Quijano terms "the coloniality of power" and "modernity." The coloniality of power introduces the basic and universal social classification of the population of the planet in terms of the idea of race, a replacing of relations of superiority and inferiority established through (...) domination with naturalized understandings of inferiority and superiority. In this essay, Lugones introduces a systemic understanding of gender constituted by colonial/modernity in terms of multiple relations of power. This gender system has a light and a dark side that depict relations, and beings in relation as deeply different and thus as calling for very different patterns of violent abuse. Lugones argues that gender itself is a colonial introduction, a violent introduction consistently and contemporarily used to destroy peoples, cosmologies, and communities as the building ground of the "civilized" West. (shrink)

The coloniality of power is understood by Anibal Quijano as at the constituting crux of the global capitalist system of power. What is characteristic of global, Eurocentered, capitalist power is that it is organized around two axes that Quijano terms “the coloniality of power” and “modernity.” The coloniality of power introduces the basic and universal social classification of the population of the planet in terms of the idea of race, a replacing of relations of superiority and inferiority established through domination (...) with naturalized understandings of inferiority and superiority. In this essay, Lugones introduces a systemic understanding of gender constituted by colonial/modernity in terms of multiple relations of power. This gender system has a light and a dark side that depict relations, and beings in relation as deeply different and thus as calling for very different patterns of violent abuse. Lugones argues that gender itself is a colonial introduction, a violent introduction consistently and contemporarily used to destroy peoples, cosmologies, and communities as the building ground of the “civilized” West. (shrink)

Intersectionality has been adopted as the preferred term to refer to and to analyze multiple axes of oppression in feminist theory. However, less research examines if this term, and the political analyses it carries, has been adopted by women’s rights organizations in various contexts and to what effect. Drawing on interviews with activists working in a variety of women’s rights organizations in France and Canada, I show that intersectionality is only one of the repertoires that a women’s rights organization might (...) use to analyze the social experience and the political interests of women situated at the intersection of several axes of domination. I propose a typology of four repertoires that activists use to reflect on intersectionality and inclusiveness. Drawing on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the interview data, I show that hegemonic repertoires about racial or religious identity in one national context shape the way activists and organizations understand intersectionality and its challenges. The identity of organizations, as well as their main function, also shape their understanding of intersectional issues. (shrink)

Black feminist theory and theorizations by feminists of colour have identified and explored emotions linked to race and racism in feminist movements, especially in the US context. Building on this literature, this article explores the changes in feminist emotional dynamics linked to race which have been brought up by the relatively recent adoption of intersectionality in feminist movements’ discourses in two European countries, France and Switzerland, which are both often described as ‘colour-blind’ contexts. Drawing on Hochschild’s concept of feeling rules, (...) we argue that intersectionality has changed the ways feminists are legitimately expected to feel about race and racism within feminist movements in both contexts. As feeling rules vary according to the members’ positions within the movement, we contend that these changes in emotional dynamics contribute to redefine feminists’ relations and feminist membership along racial lines. Based on interviews with young feminist activists in France and Switzerland during mobilization processes characterized by a prominent use of intersectionality, we observe how intersectionality discourses bring about new feeling rules in relation to race and racism. These feeling rules differ for white and non-white feminists: while intersectionality has led young white feminists to self-education and self-critique, racialized feminists often expressed mixed feelings about intersectionality and its use, in particular by white feminists. Importantly, these changes in feeling rules have allowed racialized feminists to renegotiate their relations with white feminists and their emotional content, as well as their position within the movement. (shrink)

Can the quality of gender+ equality policies be defined in ways that apply across different policy contexts and different policy moments? In light of different scholarly debates and empirical material from gender violence policy debates especially in Southern and Central Eastern Europe, this article discusses dilemmas around defining the quality of gender+ equality policies. It proposes a two-dimensional model. The first dimension links quality to procedural aspects: empowerment of women’s rights advocates at different stages of the policy process, and transformation (...) with reference to prevailing contextual legacies. The second dimension is more substantive, and includes genderedness, intersectionality and the structurally transformative focus of policies. The article illustrates how within the framework set by these criteria, the quality of gender equality policies is constructed through policy debates in ways that are dependent on the different discursive, institutional and structural factors specific to various policy contexts. (shrink)

Austerity politics, war in the Middle East and at other borders of the European Union, the rise of nationalisms, the emergence of populist parties and politicians, Islamophobia and the refugee crisis are amongst the recent developments suggesting the need for discussions about the theories and concepts that academic disciplines provide for making sense of societal, cultural and political transformations. In this article, we focus on the capacities of feminist political theories to undertake this task. By assessing different feminist approaches to (...) political analysis that range from focusing on women and men, to analysing gender, to doing intersectionality and to adopting post-structural and new materialist approaches, we explore the contributions and the limitations of each framework. This allows us to consider where feminist theoretical debates on gender and politics currently are, to assess old and new developments and to address lacunae in the debate. Our argument is that dominant approaches in political science influence the emergence and marginalisation of particular feminist frameworks for political analysis, but also that feminist theorising of gender and politics, in striving for recognition within mainstream political science, reproduces its own hegemonies and marginalisations. (shrink)

Servant leadership offers a compelling ideal of self-sacrificing individuals who put the needs of others before their own and cultivate a culture of growth in their organisations. Although the theory’s attempts to emphasise the moral, emotional and relational dimensions of leadership are laudable, it has primarily assumed a decontextualised view of leadership untouched by power. This article aims to problematise servant leadership by undertaking an intersectional analysis of an Asian cis-male heterosexual senior manager in Australia. Through in-depth interviews with the (...) manager and his staff, the article shows how his attempts to practice servant leadership were informed by intersecting power dynamics of race, gender, sexuality, age and class that subordinated him to white power. The findings demonstrate the ways servant leadership is necessarily embedded in wider power structures that shape who gets to be a “servant leader” and who remains merely a “servant”. (shrink)

This article examines how migrant and immigrant sex workers have been rendered invisible before the courts and parliament in the reform of laws regarding sex work in Canada. A discourse analysis of the expansive legal record in the Bedford case and the transcripts of Parliamentary debates and testimony before Standing Committees confirm the lack of nuanced discussion on how criminal law reform could impact migrant and immigrant sex workers. As such, while the case of Bedford and the resulting change in (...) the law made by Parliament have been celebrated as a win for some sex workers as an acknowledgment, recognition and judicial validation of experiences by legal institutions of sex workers, a sub-group of women – migrant and immigrant sex workers – remain in the shadows. This article examines how law excludes migrant and immigrant sex workers; it is a starting point for research on how migrant and immigrant sex workers may participate in future legal reform. (shrink)

South Africa has been undergoing a process of transformation since the end of White minority rule in 1994. During this period, various employment and lifestyle opportunities have given rise to a growing Black middle class. Against this backdrop, the article draws upon an intersectional approach to corpus-assisted discourse studies in order to examine the construction of the BMC in a 1.4 million-word corpus composed of 20 mainstream Anglophone South African newspaper titles published between 2008 and 2014. With the help of (...) the corpus tool AntConc, the article investigates the collocates of ‘black middle class’, ‘black diamonds’, ‘clever blacks’ and ‘coconuts’, classifying results according to semantic categories in order to provide an idea of the multiple but nuanced representations of the BMC in contemporary SA. The analysis finds several lexically rich moralizing and paternalistic discourses that, in accordance with an intersectional perspective, enact a complex pattern of strategies that are simultaneously exclusionary and inclusionary. (shrink)

For lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer youth, identity development is one of the most critical developmental task. LGBTQ youth are shown to be at risk for a variety of risk factors including depression and suicidal ideation and attempts due to how their identities are appraised in heteronormative societies. However, most LGBTQ educational psychology research have highlighted protective factors that are primarily relevant to support LGBTQ white-youth. One of the major developmental theories, Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development, has identified adolescence (...) as the period where identity development occurs. However, through an intersectional lens, identity development appears to encompass more than adolescence but also emerging adulthood, a developmental stage not accounted for by Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development. The primary goal of this study is to seek to understand and question Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development through an intersectional lens of an autoethnography of my LGBTQ experiences. An autoethnographic approach [diary entries, conversations, interview, social media websites and blogs, and drawing ] is used to understand my LGBTQ-person of color experiences of “coming out” or self-disclosure during my adolescence through emerging adulthood. Data was collected on April 2020 and spanned from 2006 through 2020 to account for the developmental period of adolescence and emerging adulthood. Thematic analysis revealed four themes across the two developmental periods: confusion and conflict between my gay and ethnic identity as a closeted adolescent, my first “coming out” as a gay adolescent and “it got better,” frustration arising from the internal conflict between my gay and POC identity as an emerging adult, and frustration arising from external experiences with the flaws of LGBTQ community inclusivity. Results reflected a continuous theme of identity exploration and struggle through both adolescence and emerging adulthood, highlighting the need for future research to replicate similar experiences from other intersectional individuals during emerging adulthood stage, a developmental stage that is considered in between Erikson’s adolescent and young adulthood developmental stage. (shrink)

In 2014 Jennifer Cramblett, a white lesbian, filed a Complaint for Wrongful Birth alleging that the Midwest Sperm Bank mistakenly provided sperm from an African–American donor. In this article, we trace the complex and overlapping lines of legal and social inheritance that have conditioned not only the possibility of such a lawsuit, but also the legal language and arguments within the Complaint itself. First, we trace the racial politics of homonormativity, which set the conditions of possibility for an out, white (...) lesbian to bring this case forward. Second, we trace the inheritance of wrongful birth tort law, reviewing its prior race and disability-related uses, and its basis in feminist reproductive rights. Third, we trace how disability, race and sexuality interlock within the eugenic inheritance of both ‘wrongful birth’ and reproductive technologies. Finally, we follow traces of racial inheritance, namely, the loss of white property and proximity to whiteness. (shrink)

There is an increasing movement toward accessibility in arts spaces, including recent legislative changes and commitments at individual, organizational, and systemic levels to integrating access into the arts across Canada. In this article, we explore Relaxed Performance in the context of this movement. We present the results of a reflexive thematic analysis of interviews conducted with participants who completed RP training offered by the British Council to. understand the training’s effectiveness and impact. We explore the significance of the training, and (...) of RP in general, and in relation to disability studies and cultural and political activism. We undertake this exploration against a backdrop of interrogating who RP is for and by. The themes we describe are: Committed to Access, Training is Critical, Inviting Bodies to be Bodies, and Imagining Audiences. These themes tell a story of how RP relates to broader access work, the importance of training grounded in and led by disability/difference, the need to consider the relationships between bodies and spaces, and the tensions inherent to billing RP as “for all.” We conclude with an exploration of possible modifications, enhancements, or theoretical imaginings that could help RP to become more radically open to difference as it emerges, shifts, and changes. (shrink)

Despite widespread recognition of an emergent politics of data in our midst, we strikingly lack a political theory of data. We readily acknowledge the presence of data across our political lives, but we often do not know how to conceptualize the politics of all those data points—the forms of power they constitute and the kinds of political subjects they implicate. Recent work in numerous academic disciplines is evidence of the first steps toward a political theory of data. This article maps (...) some limits of this emergent literature with an eye to enriching its theoretical range. The literature on data politics, both within political theory and elsewhere, has thus far focused almost exclusively on the algorithm. This article locates a further dimension of data politics in the work of formatting technology or, more simply, formats. Formats are simultaneously conceptual and technical in the ways they define what can even count as data, and by extension who can count as data and how they can count. A focus on formats is of theoretical value because it provides a bridge between work on the conceptual contours of categories and the technology-centric literature on algorithms that tends to ignore the more conceptual dimensions of data technology. The political insight enabled by format theory is shown in the context of an extended interrogation of the politics of racialized redlining. (shrink)

The article focuses on the temporal and epistemic economy connected to the transatlantic travels of the categorical triad of ‘race-class-gender’. It looks at conditions and forces that have fuelled the dynamics of the discourse on differences and inequality among women and analyses feminist discourse and its aporias as a particular environment for the travels of theories. Furthermore, it follows the changes the triad of ‘race-class-gender’ undergoes on its transatlantic route from the United States to a German-speaking context and it outlines (...) the theoretical challenges connected to an intersectional perspective that aims to overcome a theoretical stagnation that itself finds symptomatic expression in the ritual citing of ‘race-class-gender’. (shrink)

In Prosecuting Domestic Violence: A Philosophical Analysis, Michelle Madden Dempsey focuses on the dilemma prosecutors face when domestic violence victims are unwilling to cooperate in the criminal prosecution of their abusive partners. Starting from the premise that the ultimate goal should be putting an end to domestic violence, Dempsey urges prosecutors to act as feminists in deciding how to proceed in such cases. Doing so, Dempsey argues, will tend to make the character of the prosecutor’s community and state less patriarchal (...) and thus help stamp out domestic violence. This article analyzes two issues arising from Dempsey’s work: first, whether prosecutors can justifiably be viewed as representatives of their states and communities; and, second, how prosecutors committed to using their discretion to battle both domestic violence and patriarchy would go about determining in a particular case whether to pursue criminal charges against the wishes of a victim. (shrink)

Through the analysis of an 18-month ethnography at an exotic dance club located in the Northeastern United States, I uncover how Latina exotic dancers manage their participation in exotic dance by deploying constructions of Latinidad as embodied cues. I focus on Playpen’s weekly event, “Latina Night,” to demonstrate how racialized, sexualized, and gendered constructs relative to Latinidad are produced and regulated in this exotic dance setting. Study participants draw on embodied markers to negotiate how their bodies are read. Those markers (...) include nationality-based appeals, time elapsed since migration, and the ability to express constructions of Latinidad through dance performance. I draw on intersectionality as a conceptual tool, filtered through a sensibility to Latina/o/x lives and experiences, to analyze the nuances of racialization as experienced by Latinas. This approach destabilizes the U.S. black–white racial binary and opens intersectionality to a more nuanced understanding of the production of Latinidad. By approaching racialization as an embodied phenomenon, I elucidate how bodily markers, beyond skin color, become imbued with racialized meaning and condition racialized erotic capital. No less important is how participants draw on racialized, gendered, and sexualized tropes to benefit racialized erotic capital. (shrink)

COVID-19 has uncovered the vulnerabilities, inequalities and fragility present within our social community which has exposed and exacerbated the pre-existing racial and socioeconomic inequalities that disproportionately affect health outcomes for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) people. Such disparities are fuelled by complex socioeconomic health determinants and longstanding structural inequalities. This paper aims to explore the inequalities and vulnerabilities of BAME communities laid bare by the Public Health England (PHE) reports published in June 2020, concluding with suggested strategies to address (...) inequalities in a post COVID-19 recovery. (shrink)

Social scientists have expended substantial effort to identify group patterns of deviant behavior. Yet beyond the ill-conceived treatment of sexual minorities as inherently deviant, they have rarely considered how gendered sexual identities shape participation in deviance. We argue for the utility of centering theories of gender and sexuality in intersectional deviance research. We demonstrate how this intentional focus on gender and sexuality provides important empirical insights while avoiding past pitfalls of stigmatizing sexual minorities. Drawing on theories of hegemonic masculinity, emphasized (...) femininity, and minority stress together with criminological general strain theory, we demonstrate how societal expectations and constraints generate strains among GSI groups that may lead to distinctly patterned deviance, using the case of prescription drug misuse during sex. We employ thematic analysis of 120 in-depth interviews with people who misuse prescription drugs, stratified by GSI. We identify six themes highlighting distinct pathways from strain to misuse during sex for different GSI groups: intimacy management, achieving sexual freedom, regulating sexual mood, performance confidence, increased sense of control, and managing sexual identity conflict. In this article, we demonstrate the empirical and theoretical importance of centering gender and sexuality in deviance research and provide a roadmap for theoretical integration. (shrink)

How are we theologically imagining feminism’s further becomings at this juncture of multiple intertwined uncertainties? Aided by a poem by Emily Dickinson, this meditation on a transfeminist potentiality within and beyond Christianity plies a trinity of entanglement, mystery, and multiplicity.

We start by introducing the idea of echo chambers. Echo chambers are social and epistemic structures in which opinions, leanings, or beliefs about certain topics are amplified and reinforced due to repeated interactions within a closed system; that is, within a system that has a rather homogeneous sample of sources or people, which all share the same attitudes towards the topics in question. Echo chambers are a particularly dangerous phenomena because they prevent the critical assessment of sources and contents, thus (...) leading the people living within them to deliberately ignore or exclude opposing views. In the second part of this paper, we argue that the reason for the appearance of echo chambers lies in the adoption of what we call ‘epistemic vices’. We examine which vices might be responsible for their emergence, and in doing so, we focus on a specific one; ‘epistemic violence’. In assessing and evaluating the role of this epistemic vice, we note that it can be triggered by epistemic contexts characterized by high stakes that may turn ordinary intellectual virtues (such as skepticism) into vices (such as denialism). In the third part of this contribution, we suggest a way to deal with echo chambers. The solution focuses on advocating a responsibilist pedagogy of virtues and vices that -we claim- might be capable of preventing their emergence. (shrink)

Whereas intersectionality presents a fruitful framework for theoretical and empirical research, some of its fundamental features present great confusion. The term ‘intersectionality’ and its metaphor of the crossroads seem to reproduce what it aims to avoid: conceiving categories as separate. Despite the attempts for developing new metaphors that illustrate the mutual constitution relation among categories, gender, race or class keep being imagined as discrete units that intersect, mix or combine. Here we identify two main problems in metaphors: the lack of (...) differentiation between positions and effects and the problem of reification. We then present a new metaphor that overcomes these two problems: a basket of apples. We argue that considering social positions as the diverse properties of different apples avoids reification by considering categories as properties and not as objects themselves, and at the same time it allows us to think about the effects dimension from a plural and contextual approach. With this shift, we propose a reframing of the discussion in debates on intersectionality theory on the relation among categories, their in/separability and fragmentation. (shrink)

Working beyond the inclination to inaugurate alternative theoretical traditions alongside canonical sociology, this article demonstrates the value of recovering latent gender theory from within classic concepts—in this case, Weber’s “charisma.” Close readings of Weber reveal, (a) tools for theorizing extraordinary, non-masculinist agency, and, (b) clues that account for the conventional wisdom (popular and scholastic) that charisma is “not for women.” While contemporary movements may be tempted to eschew charismatic leadership per se because of legacies of dominance by men, there is (...) value in Weber’s formulation, which anticipated the performative turn in social theory that would destabilize biologistic gender ontologies. Value in this exchange also flows back to Weber: by confronting his intermittent tendency to describe charisma in terms that we now recognize as “customs of manly power,” we reveal heretofore unseen imperfections (i.e., traditionalist modes of legitimation) in his ideal-type. This engagement thus demonstrates an empowering mutuality between contemporary gender theory and “the classics.” The article ends by theorising the nexus of gender and charisma in the case of Trump, pointing to possibilities for vitiating Donald Trump’s charisma, as well as for anti-Trumpian charisma. (shrink)

This article explores precarity as a conceptual framework to understand the intersection of migration and low-waged work in the global south. Using a case study of cross-border migrant domestic workers in South Africa, I discuss current debates on framing and understanding precarity, especially in the global south, and test its use as a conceptual framework to understand the everyday lived experiences and strategies of a group that face multiple forms of exclusion and vulnerability. I argue that a form of negotiated (...) precarity, defined as transactions which provide opportunities for survival but also render people vulnerable, can be a useful way to make sense of questions around legality and formality in the context of poorly protected work, insecure citizenship and social exclusion. Precarity as a negotiated strategy shows the ways in which people interact with systems and institutions and foregrounds their agency. But it also illustrates that the negative outcomes inherent in more traditional notions of precarity, expressed in physical and economic vulnerability, and discrimination in employment relations, mostly hurt the poor. This suggests the importance of an intersectional approach to understanding precarity in labour migration studies. (shrink)

The conferralist account of social properties that Ásta develops and defends in Categories We Live By is persuasive in many ways. Conferralism could however do better, by its own lights, at handling the phenomenon of intersectionality. This paper first suggests a friendly amendment to the schema for conferrals that Asta offers. This helps to explain the difficulty concerning intersectionality. Finally, the paper suggests a way of developing the conferralist account that would resolve this difficulty.

Congdon (2017), Giladi (2018), and McConkey (2004) challenge feminist epistemologists and recognition theorists to come together to analyze epistemic injustice. I take up this challenge by highlighting the failure of recognition in cases of testimonial and hermeneutical injustice experienced by victims of sexual harassment and sexual assault. I offer the #MeToo movement as a case study to demonstrate how the process of mutual recognition makes visible and helps overcome the epistemic injustice suffered by victims of sexual harassment and sexual assault. (...) I argue that in declaring “me too,” the epistemic subject emerges in the context of a polyphonic symphony of victims claiming their status as agents who are able to make sense of their own social experiences and able to convey their knowledge to others. (shrink)

This special issue of IJFAB starts from the premise that fitness is a feminist issue, and, more specifically, it is an issue that ought to be of concern to feminists interested in bioethics. While a neglected concept in feminist bio-ethics, fitness is of key importance to women’s health and well-being. Not only that, it is also an area of women’s lives that invites unwelcome policing and advice from friends, family members, medical practitioners, and even strangers. People have a difficult time (...) prying apart the idea of fitness from that of weight loss. Most women who embark on a fitness routine have weight loss among their primary goals.Since late 2011, we and a host of guest authors have been exploring the... (shrink)

Previous research on gender and political leadership has narrowly defined gender consciousness, failing to account for the broader commitments, concerns, and loyalties held by women of color. In this article, the author calls for an intersectional approach to analyzing the gender consciousness of political leaders. She presents findings from four months of participant observation in a Latina candidate’s campaign for city council. The author finds that the campaign presented an intersectional consciousness in the candidate’s messages, using gendered discourses to frame (...) her commitment to issues of greatest concern to Hispanic and low-income communities. The campaign’s mobilization efforts targeted both women and Hispanics, but focused most of its resources into courting the vote of middle- and upper-class white women. Contrary to recent claims that intersectionality has outlived its usefulness as an analytic tool, the author argues that intersectionality remains an underutilized and much-needed framework for helping to close gaps in the understanding of political life. (shrink)

Since Alice Walker coined the term womanist in the early 1980s, black feminists and feminists of color have created a rich, soulful body of scholarly work. Contributions to womanist thought have emerged primarily in the fields of theology and ethics. The aim of this article is to put womanism in historical context, examine transpersonal expression in womanist scholarship, and to articulate the values that inform emotional healing in a womanist context. Womanism is spiritualized due to its original definition and subsequent (...) development, making transpersonal thought a resonant fit for unearthing paths to authentic cultural competency in psychology and other disciplines. (shrink)

Articulating heterosexualism is not to supplicate for gays but to better understand consequences of institutionalizing a particular relationship between men and women. In this essay, Hoagland takes up the claim from a number of women of color that women are not all the same gender.

: Articulating heterosexualism is not to supplicate for gays (that's the work of 'heterosexism' and 'homophobia') but to better understand consequences of institutionalizing a particular relationship between men and women. In this essay, Hoagland takes up the claim from a number of women of color that women are not all the same gender.

Neoliberal ideology and exclusionary policies based on racialized identities characterize the current contexts in North America and Western Europe. Nursing knowledge cannot be abstracted from social, political and historical contexts; the task of examining the influence of race and racial ideologies on disciplinary knowledge and inquiry therefore remains an important task. Contemporary analyses of the role and responsibility of the discipline in addressing race‐based health and social inequities as a focus of nursing inquiry remain underdeveloped. In this article, we examine (...) nursing's engagement with ideas about race and racism and explore the ways in which nursing knowledge and inquiry have been influenced by race‐based ideological discourses. Drawing on Henry and Tator's framework of democratic racism, we consider how strategic discursive responses—the discourses of individualism, multiculturalism, colour‐blindness, political correctness and denial—have been deployed within nursing knowledge and inquiry to reinforce the belief in an essentially fair and just society while avoiding the need to acknowledge the persistence of racist discourses and ideologies. Greater theoretical, conceptual and methodological clarity regarding race, racialization and related concepts in nursing inquiry is needed to address health and social inequities. (shrink)

Answers to the question of immigrant admissions have been debated extensively by political philosophers since the 1980s. A wide variety of normative approaches to the question have been taken, but very nearly zero have been expressly feminist. Generalizing from Alison Jaggar's articulation of a feminist methodological approach to the political morality of abortion, this article proposes a feminist methodological approach to immigrant admissions. This article does not defend a substantive view on what policies states ought to adopt, but it does (...) describe several features of our social world that are salient for a feminist methodological approach to the assessment of the justice of states’ immigrant admissions policies. (shrink)

Informed consent is medico-legal orthodoxy and the principal means by which research encounters with the body are regulated in the UK. However, biomedical advancements increasingly frustrate the degree to which informed consent can be practiced, whilst introducing ambiguity into its legal significance. What is more, feminist theory fundamentally disrupts the ideologically liberal foundations of informed consent, exposing it as a potentially inadequate mode of bioethical regulation. This paper explores these critiques by reference to a case study—embryo donation to health research, (...) following fertility treatment, as regulated by the HFEA 1990—and contends that informed consent cannot adequately respond to the material realities of this research encounter. Thereafter, by drawing on feminist theories of vulnerability, this paper proffers an alternative bioethical approach, which calls for structural reform in recognition of the fundamentally bilateral constitution of self and society and a renewed appreciation for the affective/dispositional tenor of lived experience. (shrink)

Who does the state recognize as a lawful subject? The universal body of liberal legalism has historically been imagined as a specific kind of body: white, male, heterosexual, and propertied. Can we understand the recent appearance of state violence against black bodies on the public stage in terms of recognition? Sociopolitical recognition is tethered to a history of selective and differential visibility, which has positioned certain bodies as objects of recognition and granted others the power to confer recognition. Struggles for (...) recognition are also struggles for visibility. As suggested by this photograph of a black male kneeling with his hands in the air in the middle of the street in.. (shrink)

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)