Philosophical Studies 177 (12):3783-3803 (2020)
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Abstract |
Are women (simply) adult human females? Dictionaries suggest that they are. However, philosophers who have explicitly considered the question invariably answer no. This paper argues that they are wrong. The orthodox view is that the category *woman* is a social category, like the categories *widow* and *police officer*, although exactly what this social category consists in is a matter of considerable disagreement. In any event, orthodoxy has it that *woman* is definitely not a biological category, like the categories *amphibian* or *adult human female*.
In the first part, a number of arguments are given for the view that women are adult human females; the second part turns to rebutting the main objections. Finally, a couple of morals are briefly noted: one for activist sloganeering, and one for ameliorative projects that seek to change the meaning of ‘woman’.
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Keywords | sex gender transgender intersex conceptual engineering amelioration feminism sex/gender distinction |
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DOI | 10.1007/s11098-019-01408-8 |
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References found in this work BETA
Fixing Language: An Essay on Conceptual Engineering.Herman Cappelen - 2018 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Citations of this work BETA
Escaping the Natural Attitude About Gender.Robin Dembroff - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 178 (3):983-1003.
Polysemy and Thought: Toward a Generative Theory of Concepts.Jake Quilty-Dunn - 2021 - Mind and Language 36 (1):158-185.
Evaluating Arguments for the Sex/Gender Distinction.Tomas Bogardus - 2020 - Philosophia 48 (3):873-892.
Reimagining Transgender.Robin Dembroff - forthcoming - In Talia Bettcher, Perry Zurn & Andrea Pitts (eds.), Trans Philosophy: Meaning and Mattering.
Contextualism and the Semantics of "Woman".Hsiang-Yun Chen - 2021 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 20 (8).
View all 13 citations / Add more citations
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