A M Hilder Jarvis

This article addresses two related questions. First, what is it to have a gender identity? Second, what are gender identities, metaphysically speaking? In answer to the first, I defend a “doing” model: to “have” a gender identity is to engage in an ongoing act of self-interpretation. In answer to the second, I defend a social model: gender identities are shared social tools that individuals draw on and recreate in their acts of self-interpretation. This account of gender identity remains faithful to the operative concept of gender identity, giving philosophical substance to the idea of a “gendered sense of self.” It respects sincere self-ascriptions of gender, escaping the exclusion problems that plague other accounts of gender identity. It avoids circularity, and it has greater explanatory power than rival accounts. By emphasizing how interpretative resources are learned and shared through social interactions, it captures the sense in which gender identities are not wholly internal but are negotiated in dialogue with others, using resources made available by one’s social context. It can therefore explain how and why practices of self-ascribing gender change over time and across cultures. Moreover, it explains why individuals cannot exercise entirely free choice over their gender identities yet can exercise some limited agency over them. This article demonstrates that we can take gender identity to be deeply social without denying its first-personal character; we can allow for agency without conceding unconstrained choice. We achieve this by understanding gender identity in terms of an ongoing, socially mediated practice of self-interpretation.

A trend has recently emerged among climate activists of attacking artworks as a means of registering protest. I analyse this mode of protest, which I term political iconoclasm, and offer a novel partial defence of political iconoclasm as a protest strategy for environmental activists. I focus on Just Stop Oil's attack on van Gogh's Sunflowers. I argue that climate activists' art-attacking protests differ significantly from other recent art-attacking protests: climate protestors generally target non-commemorative, morally innocent artworks, and usually do not seek to destroy the artworks they attack. I argue that iconoclastic protests have been unusually good at capturing attention. Moreover, iconoclasm can enable protestors to communicate with their audience in an unusually direct and compelling way. I address some worries about political iconoclasm, and evaluate it against two theories of permissible protest: one on which disobedience must be civil, and another on which disobedience must meet standards of proportionality and necessity, adapted from the ethics of self-defence and war. I argue that iconoclasm may be permissible on either theory. Iconoclasm is most likely to be permissible when used sparingly, when the artwork attacked has relevant representational content, and when the iconoclastic act transforms the artwork into a protest symbol.