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46The Gender Closet: Lesbian Disappearance under the Sign "Women"Feminist Studies 21 (1): 7. 1995.Can one theorize the lesbian within a feminist frame? I argue that a difference sensitive feminist frame closets lesbians because (1) heterosexist oppression has been under-theorized and thus gender analyses fail to intersect with sexual orientation analyses, (2) feminist values and goals have worked against representing lesbian difference from heterosexual women, and (3) difference sensitive feminism requires that lesbians be representable as women with a different sexuality and not as a “th…Read more
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46Precluded InterestsHypatia 30 (2): 475-485. 2015.This essay contributes to the explanatory hypotheses for why women persistently make up a third or fewer of all undergraduate philosophy majors in the United States. Following a suggestion of Tom Dougherty, Samuel Baron, and Kristie Miller, the essay first examines what women undergraduates do major in, why they might prefer these subjects to philosophy, and how departments might make philosophy more attractive. Second, the essay explores the relevance to philosophy of Sapna Cheryan’s work on t…Read more
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46Impossible Dreams: Rationality, Integrity, and Moral Imagination (review)Philosophical Review 107 (1): 125. 1998.Systemic discrimination produces individuals with a degraded self-concept who therefore may not care about autonomy or set ends compatible with human flourishing. Under systemic discrimination, the dominant conceptual and evaluative framework does not enable the oppressed to articulate their humanity or the rationality of aspiring to full human flourishing. And the injustice of that system may be fully visible only from a perspective outside of that system.
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44Peggy DesAutels and Margaret urban Walker. Moral psychology: Feminist ethics and social theory (review)Hypatia 21 (3): 214-217. 2006.
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44A Question of ObligationJournal of Applied Philosophy 37 (1): 44-50. 2020.This essay engages with Sarah Buss's 2019 annual lecture for the Society for Applied Philosophy: "Some Musings About the Limits of an Ethics That Can Be Applied – A Response to a Question About Courage and Convictions That Confronted the Author When She Woke Up on November 9, 2016." She reflects on whether one is obligated to take great risks in the face of grave injustice. I suggest shifting the normative question from “Am I obligated?” to “Is there something of moral importance that someone ne…Read more
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40Feminism, the Family, and the Politics of the Closet: Lesbian and Gay DisplacementOxford University Press UK. 2000.Feminism, the Family, and the Politics of the Closet is about placing sexual orientation politics within feminist theorizing. It is also about defining the central political issues confronting lesbians and gay men. The book brings the study of lesbians from the margins of feminist theory to the center by critiquing the analytic frameworks employed within feminist theory that renders invisible lesbians' difference from heterosexual women. This book also outlines the basic features of lesbian and …Read more
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37Review of Linda Radzik, Making Amends: Atonement in Morality, Law, and Politics (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (8). 2009.
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33Taking Seriously Dual Systems and SexHypatia 13 (1). 1998.In response to Ann Ferguson and Claudia Card, I argue that Gayle Rubin's analysis of sex-gender systems supports the hypothesis that heterosexual domination is a distinctive axis of oppression. While gender domination places women in disadvantaged positions, heterosexual domination displaces lesbians and gay men from society. In response to Chris Cuomo, I argue that same-sex desire is part of lesbians' gender ambiguity; but I agree that my work has underemphasized sexual desire.
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33Social Connections, Social Contributions, and Why They Matter: Comments on Being Sure of Each OtherCriminal Law and Philosophy 17 (2): 453-462. 2023.
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32Situating the Self: Gender, Community, and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics by Seyla Benhabib (review)Journal of Philosophy 91 (8): 426-429. 1994.
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24Civilized Oppression Jean Harvey Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999, ix + 155 pp., $59.50, $18.95 paper (review)Dialogue 40 (4): 845-. 2001.
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21Lesbian philosophyIn Kittay Eva Feder & Martín Alcoff Linda (eds.), The Blackwell Guide to Feminist Philosophy, Wiley-blackwell. 2006.This chapter contains section titled: Relation to Philosophy Lesbian Philosophies of Liberation Heterosexuality and Lesbianism. Ethics and Politics Essentialisms and Anti—Essentialisms The Future of Lesbian Philosophy Bibliography.
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20Book Reviews:Why Privacy Isn't Everything: Feminist Reflections on Personal Accountability (review)Ethics 118 (2): 324-327. 2008.
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14Letters to the EditorProceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 60 (1). 1986.
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12Moral Aims brings together nine previously published essays that focus on the significance of the social practice of morality for what we say as moral theorists, the plurality of moral aims that agents are trying to realize and that sometimes come into tension, and the special difficulties that conventionalized wrongdoing poses
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10Losing One's SelfIn Catriona Mackenzie & Kim Atkins (eds.), Practical Identity and Narrative Agency, Routledge. 2008.What is it that enables agents to find the business of reflective endorsement, deliberation, and willing meaningful? I argue that our having motivating reasons to act-and thus reason to lead a life-depends on a set of background "frames" of agency being in place. These "frames" are attitudes toward and beliefs about our own agency that, under normal conditions, are simply taken for granted as we lead our lives as agents and that thus do not enter into our normative reflection, deliberation, plan…Read more
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10Moral Aims brings together nine previously published essays that focus on the significance of the social practice of morality for what we say as moral theorists, the plurality of moral aims that agents are trying to realize and that sometimes come into tension, and the special difficulties that conventionalized wrongdoing poses.
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5Review of: Concepts of Health and Disease: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (review)Theoretical Medicine: An International Journal for the Philosophy and Methodology of Medical Research and Practice 4 329-332. 1983.Last updated - 2020-01-06.
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5Artless Integrity (review)Dialogue 41 (2): 417-420. 2002.Feminist philosophy has often succeeded in breaking new philosophical ground because it takes its paradigm examples from the lives of marginalized people. It then seeks to construct philosophical views that are adequate to those lives. Artless Integrity is, in this sense, a work in feminist philosophy. Susan Babbitt focuses on the lives of those at "moral risk." A person is at moral risk if social expectations undermine her options for self-realization, and if her choice to redirect her life tow…Read more
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1Civilized Oppression (review)Dialogue 40 (4): 845-847. 2001.Lynching, arbitrary imprisonment, and police brutality are uncivilized forms of oppression that cause obvious, measurable harms. Exercised through physical violence or unjust legal action, uncivilized oppression expresses ill will toward vulnerable individuals and blatantly misuses power. Civilized oppression, by contrast, takes place in routine, socially accepted institutional and intimate relationships between people. Civilized oppression may cause no obvious harms, may be motivated by good in…Read more
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Arizona State UniversityPhilosophy - School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious StudiesRetired faculty
Tempe, Arizona, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Normative Ethics |
Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality |
Areas of Interest
Normative Ethics |
Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality |