I this paper, I discuss Plumwood’s feminist logic program. I argue both in favor of her general stance in feminist philosophy of logic and her more specific feminist critique of classical logic. Plumwood’s general position is in opposition with (I think it’s safe to say) the prevailing view in analytic philosophy about the relation between formal logic and feminist theory, according to which feminist theory cannot say anything about or against logic proper, since the issues of oppression are external to (...) logic as a (formal) discipline. Connected to this externalism is a non-Plumwoodian view that “feminist logic” either doesn’t mean anything, or that it has some figurative meaning. Concerning Plumwood’s (I think it’s safe to say) not widely accepted feminist critique of classical logic, I propose an interpretation according to which classical logic is oppressive only when it’s used to describe a particular, “dualized” or “dualizable”, kind of notions. In accordance with this understanding, I consider five features of oppressive differentiations as proposed by Plumwood, arguing that two of them don’t concern negation, the feminist critique of which operator Plumwood is mostly (in)famous for. (shrink)

The virtual has become the latest rostrum for ideological heteronormativity; it increasingly plays host to an insidious rhetoric of unjustifiably fixed and oppositional gender binaries that exhort heterosexuality as a norm. Conservative political and religious groups, as well as consumerist advertising, utilise digital technology to reinforce cast-in-stone and adversarial social perspectives for manipulative and exploitative ends. Contrastingly, the virtual may be mobilised to support and facilitate queering in contemporary societies and may positively counter such fixed ideological heteronormative categories of social (...) life. Crucial in this transformative account of the virtual is the body, which is for Merleau-Ponty the horizon of engagement with the world as a condition for perception and performativity. Queer perspectives may, in turn, overcome the oversight of Merleau-Ponty (as critically suggested by Judith Butler and Iris Marion Young) regarding the specific gendered characteristics of the body itself, and allows for an expanded embodied and queer conceptualisation of the virtual. A transformative vision of the virtual entails therefore a rethinking of our understanding of digital technology through (a) the phenomenology of the body-subject and (b) queer theory. I argue that the idea of the body as entirely discursive or performative (per queer theory) needs to be adjusted by explicating the foundational ontological characteristics of the body-subject’s encounter of the virtual. (shrink)

The inclusion problem for theories of gender arises when those theories inappropriately fail to include certain individuals in the gender categories to which they ought to belong. The inclusion problem affects both of the most influential traditions in feminist theorizing about gender: social-position accounts and identity accounts. I argue that the inclusion problem can be solved by adopting a structured theory of gender, which incorporates aspects of both social-position accounts and identity accounts. According to the theory I favor, an individual’s (...) gender is determined by their gender identity if they have one; otherwise, it is determined by their social position. My structured approach to gender offers a more direct solution to the gender inclusion problem than alternatives recently advocated by Barnes (2020), Jenkins (2023), and others. It also points the way to a simple solution to inclusion problems that arise at the level of gendered language. (shrink)

In the political discourse regarding gender identity, the concept of biological sex has been weaponised by gender critical commentators to oppose gender affirmation for trans people. Recently, these commentators have appealed to an essentialist model of sex based on anisogamy, or relative gamete size, to argue that one’s sex is an immutable characteristic. I argue that the gender critical argument is unsound. The diverse purposes of sex classification and the complex variability of people’s sexual characteristics show that an essentialist model (...) is untenable. I then consider how a more adequate theoretical framework from the philosophy of biology can accommodate this complexity and capture how sex is classified in relevant contexts. Further implications of the framework are explored which concern the vagueness, polysemy, and mutability of sex. These undercut the gender critical argument and show that the appeal to biological sex fails to undermine gender affirmation for trans people. (shrink)