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18Personal Autonomy and the Paradox of Feminine SocializationJournal of Philosophy 84 (11): 619-628. 1987.
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16341“The Feminist Debate over Values in Autonomy Theory”In Mark Piper & Andrea Veltman (eds.), Autonomy, Oppression, and Gender, Oxford University Press. pp. 114-140. 2014.
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16Khader, Serene. Adaptive Preferences and Women’s Empowerment.New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. 238. $99.00 ; $24.95 (review)Ethics 123 (2): 378-382. 2013.
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32Responsibility and Identity in Global Justice—Editor's IntroductionHypatia 26 (4): 667-671. 2011.
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17Feminist social thought: a reader (edited book)Routledge. 1997.Feminist Social Thought brings together key articles by prominent feminist thinkers, offering students sophisticated treatment of the theoretical topics central to feminist social thought. This reader highlights salient concerns in contemporary feminist scholarship and the advances feminist philosophers have made. The editor's introduction outlines alternative routes through the text, allowing instructors to easily adapt this reader to their particular courses and the interests of their students…Read more
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67Part II. Section 1. Recent Accounts of Autonomy: Emphasizing the problematic relationship between autonomy and socialization, Meyers explores prominent views of autonomy, including Robert Young's, Stanley Benn's, Harry Frankfurt's, Gerald Dworkin's, and Gary Watson's. Having identified three main models for "rescuing autonomy from socialization," she identifies a single defect underlying all of them - namely, their assumption that personal autonomy requires transcending socialization through fre…Read more
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9Who's There? Selfhood, Self-Regard, and Social RelationsHypatia 20 (4): 200-215. 2000.J. David Velleman develops a canny, albeit mentalistic, theory of selfhood that furnishes some insights feminist philosophers should heed but that does not adequately heed some of the insights feminist philosophers have developed about the embodiment and relationality of the self. In my view, reflenvity cannot do the whole job of accounting for selfhood, for it rests on an unduly sharp distinction between reflexive loci of understanding and value, on the one hand, and embodiment and relationalit…Read more
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2223Personale Autonomie ohne TranszendenzIn Monika Betzler (ed.), Autonomie de Person, Mentis. 2013.
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822Victims of Trafficking, Reproductive Rights, and AsylumOxford Handbook of Reproductive Ethics. 2016.My aim is to extend and complement the arguments that others have already made for the claim that women who are citizens of economically disadvantaged states and who have been trafficked into sex work in economically advantaged states should be considered candidates for asylum. Familiar arguments cite the sexual violence and forced labor that trafficked women are subjected to along with their well-founded fear of persecution if they’re repatriated. What hasn’t been considered is that reproducti…Read more
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83Contrasting ontological accounts of autonomy with procedural accounts, Meyers defends the procedural model. For Meyers, the key question for a theory of autonomy is how people make decisions. She introduces the idea of autonomy competency - a repertoire of coordinated skills that make self-discovery, self-definition, and self-direction and hence autonomy possible. The authentic self is a self that has some degree of proficiency with respect to this competency and that emerges and evolves through…Read more
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16Recognition, Responsibility, and Rights: Feminist Ethics and Social TheoryRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2002.This collection of papers by prominent feminist thinkers advances the positive feminist project of remapping the moral by developing theory that acknowledges the diversity of women
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1116Narrative Structures, Narratives of Abuse, and Human RightsIn Lisa Tessman (ed.), Feminist Ethics and Social and Political Philosophy: Theorizing the Non- Ideal, Kluwer Academic Publishers. 2009.This paper explores the relation between victims’ stories and normativity. As a contribution to understanding how the stories of those who have been abused or oppressed can advance moral understanding, catalyze moral innovation, and guide social change, this paper focuses on narrative as a variegated form of representation and asks whether personal narratives of victimization play any distinctive role in human rights discourse. In view of the fact that a number of prominent students of narrati…Read more
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113Diana Tietjens Meyers examines the political underpinnings of psychoanalytic feminism, analyzing the relation between the nature of the self and the structure of good societies. She argues that impartial reason--the approach to moral reflection which has dominated 20th-century Anglo-American philosophy--is inadequate for addressing real world injustices. ____Subjection and Subjectivity__ is central to feminist thought across a wide range of disciplines.
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45Mother Time: Women, Aging, and Ethics (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 1999.Fifteen original essays open up a novel area of inquiry: the distinctively ethical dimensions of women's experiences of and in aging. Contributors distinguished in the fields of feminist ethics and the ethics of aging explore assumptions, experiences, practices, and public policies that affect women's well-being and dignity in later life. The book brings to the study of women's aging a reflective dimension missing from the empirical work that has predominated to date. Ethical studies of aging ha…Read more
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21Intersectional Identity and the Authentic Self? Opposites AttractIn Catriona Mackenzie & Natalie Stoljar (eds.), Relational Autonomy: Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy, Agency, and the Social Self, Oxford University Press. 2000.
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55Part III. Section 1. Theories of Socialization. Autonomy as autonomy competency acknowledges the necessity of socialization for autonomy. Preliminary to considering this claim in relation to gender, Meyers sketches three social scientific models of socialization - psychoanalysis, social learning, and cognitive development.
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1288Feminism and Women’s Autonomy: The Challenge of Female Genital CuttingMetaphilosophy 31 (5): 469-491. 2000.Feminist studies of female genital cutting (FGC) provide ample evidence that many women exercise effective agency with respect to this practice, both as accommodators and as resisters. The influence of culture on autonomy is ambiguous: women who resist cultural mandates for FGC do not necessarily enjoy greater autonomy than do those women who accommodate the practice, yet it is clear that some social contexts are more conducive to autonomy than others. In this paper, I explore the implications f…Read more
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35Part III. Section 4. Full Autonomy - An Attainable Ideal: Maximal or full autonomy is an unrealistic goal for all people. Contrary to a common assumption, however, masculine socialization does not generally result in full autonomy, but rather in medial autonomy. Conformism is as much of an obstacle to the full autonomy of men as it is for women. Still, men in western cultures are more likely to be more autonomous than women, and this discrepancy calls for change.
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7Women Philosophers, Sidelined Challenges, and Professional PhilosophyHypatia 20 (3): 149-152. 2005.
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6640Poverty, Agency, and Human Rights (edited book)Oxford University Press USA. 2014.Poverty, Agency, and Human Rights collects thirteen new essays that analyze how human agency relates to poverty and human rights respectively as well as how agency mediates issues concerning poverty and social and economic human rights. No other collection of philosophical papers focuses on the diverse ways poverty impacts the agency of the poor, the reasons why poverty alleviation schemes should also promote the agency of beneficiaries, and the fitness of the human rights regime to secure both …Read more
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18The socialized individual and individual autonomy: An intersection between philosophy and psychologyIn Eva Feder Kittay & Diana T. Meyers (eds.), Women and Moral Theory, Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 146. 1987.
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1149Artifice and Authenticity: Gender Technology and Agency in Two Jenny Saville PortraitsIn Laurie Shrage (ed.), You’ve Changed”: Sex Reassignment and Personal Identity, Oxford University Press. 2009.This paper addresses two related topics: 1. The disanalogies between elective cosmetic practices and sex reassignment surgery. Why does it seem necessary for me – an aging professional woman – to ignore the blandishments of hairdressers wielding dyes and dermatologists wielding acids and scalpels? Why does it not seem equally necessary for a transgendered person to repudiate sex reassignment procedures? 2. The role of the body in identity and agency. How do phenomenological insights regardi…Read more
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104Part II. Section 4. Autonomy Competency: Meyers takes John Rawls to task for giving a superficial account of autonomy. Endorsing deliberative rationality, he furnishes no account of how to achieve it. Meyers argues that her conception of autonomy competency fills the gap in Rawls's theory. Moreover, it is compatible with the emotional bonds of a relational self, and, acknowledging human fallibility, it provides an account of how autonomous people can recognize and correct their missteps. In the …Read more
Storrs, Connecticut, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Action |
Normative Ethics |
Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality |