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16168“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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6398Poverty, 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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2219Personale Autonomie ohne TranszendenzIn Monika Betzler (ed.), Autonomie de Person, Mentis. 2013.
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1929Two Victim Paradigms and the Problem of ‘Impure’ VictimsHumanity 2 (2): 255-275. 2011.Philosophers have had surprisingly little to say about the concept of a victim although it is presupposed by the extensive philosophical literature on rights. Proceeding in four stages, I seek to remedy this deficiency and to offer an alternative to the two current paradigms that eliminates the Othering of victims. First, I analyze two victim paradigms that emerged in the late 20th century along with the initial iteration of the international human rights regime – the pathetic victim paradigm…Read more
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1286Feminism 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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1259Corporeal selfhood, self-interpretation, and narrative selfhoodPhilosophical Explorations 17 (2): 141-153. 2014.Ever since Freud pioneered the “talking cure,” psychologists of various stripes have explored how autobiographical narrative bears on self-understanding and psychic wellbeing. Recently, there has been a wave of philosophical speculation as to whether autobiographical narrative plays an essential or important role in the constitution of agentic selves. However, embodiment has received little attention from philosophers who defend some version of the narrative self. Catriona Mackenzie is an imp…Read more
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1142Artifice 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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1111Narrative 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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1086Feminism and Sex Trafficking: Rethinking Some Aspects of Autonomy and PaternalismEthical Theory and Moral Practice 17 (3): 427-441. 2014.This paper argues that potential cases of oppression, such as sex trafficking, can sometimes comprise autonomous choices by the trafficked individuals. This issue still divides radical from liberal feminists, with the former wanting to ‘rescue’ the ‘victims’ and the latter insisting that there might be good reasons for ‘hiding from the rescuers.’ This article presents new arguments for the liberal approach and raises two demands: first, help organizations should be run by affected women and be o…Read more
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852Jenny Saville Remakes the Female Nude – Feminist Reflections on the State of the ArtIn Peg Brand Weiser (ed.), Beauty Unlimited, Indiana University Press. pp. 137-162. 2013.Jenny Saville is a leading contemporary painter of female nudes. This paper explores her work in light of theories of gender and embodied agency. Recent work on the phenomenology of embodiment draws a distinction between the body image and the body schema. The body image is your representation of your own body, including your visual image of it and your emotional attitudes towards it. The body schema is comprised of your proprioceptive knowledge, your corporeally encoded memories, and your c…Read more
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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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777Women philosophers, sidelined challenges, and professional philosophyHypatia 20 (3): 149-152. 2005.
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752Recovering the Human in Human RightsLaw, Culture, and Humanities 1-30. 2014.It is often said that human rights are the rights that people possess simply in virtue of being human – that is, in virtue of their intrinsic, dignity-defining common humanity. Yet, on closer inspection the human rights landscape doesn’t look so even. Once we bring perpetrators of human rights abuse and their victims into the picture, attributions of humanity to persons become unstable. In this essay, I trace the ways in which rights discourse ascribes variable humanity to certain categories of …Read more
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477Psychocorporeal Selfhood, Practical Intelligence, and Adaptive AutonomyIn Michael Kuhler & Najda Jelinek (eds.), Autonomy and the Self, Springer. 2012.It is not uncommon for people to suffer identity crises. Yet, faced with similarly disruptive circumstances, some people plunge into an identity crisis while others do not. How must selfhood be construed given that people are vulnerable to identity crises? And how must agency be construed given that some people skirt potential identity crises and renegotiate the terms of their personal identity without losing their equilibrium -- their sense of self? If an adequate theory of the self and age…Read more
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379Who'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, reflexivity 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 relationa…Read more
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366Narrative and Moral LifeIn Cheshire Calhoun (ed.), Setting the Moral Compass: Essays by Women Philosophers, Oxford University Press. 2004.
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262Personal Autonomy and the Paradox of Feminine SocializationJournal of Philosophy 84 (11): 619-628. 1987.
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148Feminists rethink the self (edited book)Westview Press. 1997.How is women’s conception of self affected by the caregiving responsibilities traditionally assigned to them and by the personal vulnerabilities imposed on them? If institutions of male dominance profoundly influence women’s lives and minds, how can women form judgments about their own best interests and overcome oppression? Can feminist politics survive in face of the diversity of women’s experience, which is shaped by race, class, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, as well as by gender? Explor…Read more
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125Women and Moral Theory (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 1987.To find more information about Rowman and Littlefield titles, please visit www.rowmanlittlefield.com.
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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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107Part IV. Section 2. Self-Respect and Autonomy: Meyers's discussion of self-respect takes into account work by Stephen Darwall, Thomas Hill, Jr., and Stephen Massey and proposes a unified triadic account that undermines the distinction between self-respect and self-esteem. After distinguishing compromised respect from unqualified respect, she shows why self-respect is both required for and a product of exercising autonomy competency.
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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
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100Part I. The book begins with literary, cinematic, and historical scenarios that exemplify personal autonomy. Meyers uses these vignettes to distinguish personal autonomy from other, variously related types of autonomy and to show that other kinds of autonomy cannot adequately address the concern people have with their own personal decisions. Noting how profoundly social experience impinges on self-discovery, self-definition, and self-direction, Meyers characterizes autonomous individuals as pers…Read more
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87Feminism 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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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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79Part IV. Section 1. The Personal and the Political Value of Autonomy: Disparities in autonomy competency number among the many ways in which women and men in western societies are unequal. Meyers holds that although personal autonomy is not the sole or paramount value, medial autonomy is not only a personal good, but is also a political good.
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77Authenticity for Real PeopleThe Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 9 195-202. 2000.In this paper I shall offer an account of the authentic self that is compatible with human intrapsychic, interpersonal, and social experience. I begin by examiningHarry Frankfurt’s influential treatment of authenticity as a form of personal integration, and argue that his conception of the integrated self is too restrictive. I then offer an alternative processual account that views integration as the intelligibility of the self that emerges when a person exercises autonomy skills.
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73Gender in the Mirror: Cultural Imagery and Women's AgencyOup Usa. 2001.The cultural imagery of women is deeply ingrained in our consciousness. So deeply, in fact, that feminists see this as a fundamental threat to female autonomy because it enshrines procreative heterosexuality as well as the relations of domination and subordination between men and women. Diana Meyers' book is about this cultural imagery - and how, once it is internalized, it shapes perception, reflection, judgement, and desire. These intergral images have a deep impact not only on the individual …Read more
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71Personal Autonomy or the Deconstructed Subject? A Reply to HekmanHypatia 7 (1): 124-132. 1992.A response to Susan Hekman's article "Reconstituting the Subject: Feminism, Modernism, and Postmodernism" and to her review of Diana T. Meyers' book Self, Society, and Personal Choice both of which appeared in Hypatia 6
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Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Action |
Normative Ethics |
Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality |