In African philosophical literature, and especially in Afro-communitarianism, there are discussions about the value of the relationship an individual has with her respective community. By community, reference is made to the metaphysical holistic view of community which includes all beings in nature. But since the article deals with gender, which is a social construction, most of the arguments appeal to a narrower version of community, that of human beings. Therefore, discussions about “value” refer to the value that is given to (...) the relationship that surpasses any individual value, and it applies or appeals to human beings. One implication of this understanding and the prioritisation of the relationship is that identity is something that is conferred by this sort of relationship. In this article, we argue that this way of understanding “identity” from an Afro-communitarian world view has something to offer in understanding or conceptualising gender(ed) identity(ies). The assumption is that gender identity will be understood as socially conferred and most importantly, one that takes community as essential. (shrink)

Gender eliminativism, also known as gender abolitionism, is the view that we should get rid of gender. I defend gender eliminativism by suggesting that many arguments that ostensibly call for rejecting it are in fact just arguments for delaying it. Although it may be true that presently gender eliminativism should not occur because of the role gender plays in people's identities, because of the need for gender to remedy oppression, because elimination is not pragmatic, because elimination is utopian, and because (...) we should have more rather than fewer genders, these are all reasons to delay, rather than deny, gender eliminativism. (shrink)

Danièle Moyal-Sharrock and Constantine Sandis have suggested that our sense of being ‘women’ (and ‘men’) can be elucidated by thinking of it as an animal certainty. The suggestion is helpful in resisting the notion that ‘being woman’ can be modelled either on the idea of indubitable first-person knowledge of one’s inner self or of a third person’s unquestionable knowledge of one’s body. One’s being woman is manifested in one’s ways of acting and reacting; it constitutes a mode of being, which (...) cannot be given further justification. Nevertheless, I argue that the emphasis on certainty may render the possible doubts an individual may entertain about being a woman at different stages and in different contexts of their life opaque. It may also obscure the philosophical analysis of what thinking of certainty with Wittgenstein may offer to the understanding of ‘woman’, since for him the exploration of meaningful and impossible forms of doubt always ran parallel to his thinking on certainty. Considering everyday examples of certainty and doubts in being a woman, I therefore discuss the dialectic between certainty and doubt in the constitution of being ‘a woman’, giving special attention to the significance of second person assertions and comments for the first person’s experience of being or not being a woman or not being ‘woman enough’. (shrink)