The Normativity of Gender

Noûs 58 (1):244-270 (2024)
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Abstract

There are important similarities between moral thought and talk and thought and talk about gender: disagreements about gender, like disagreements about morality, seem to be intractable and to outstrip descriptive agreement; and it seems coherent to reject any definition of what it is to be a woman in terms of particular social, biological, or other descriptive features, just as it seems coherent to reject any definition of what it is to be good or right in terms of any set of descriptive properties. These similarities give us reason to investigate the idea that, like moral thought and talk, gender thought and talk is inherently normative. This paper proposes a normative account of gender thought and talk in terms of fitting treatment. On this fitting treatment account, to judge that A is gender G is just to judge that it is fitting to treat A as a G. This account is a descriptive or hermeneutical account of our gender thought and talk rather than an ameliorative account of our gender concepts or a metaphysical account of gender properties in social metaphysics. This paper argues that other descriptive accounts of gender thought and talk face problems that the fitting treatment account overcomes.

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Rach Cosker-Rowland
University of Leeds

Citations of this work

Gender identity: the subjective fit account.Rach Cosker-Rowland - 2024 - Philosophical Studies 181 (10):2701-2736.
The semantics of deadnames.Taylor Koles - 2024 - Philosophical Studies 181 (4):715-739.

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References found in this work

Taking Morality Seriously: A Defense of Robust Realism.David Enoch - 2011 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
The domain of reasons.John Skorupski - 2010 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Assertion.Peter Geach - 1965 - Philosophical Review 74 (4):449-465.

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