Metaphysicians of gender are united by the assumption that, to explain gendered phenomena like gender-based oppression, we must provide an account of what gender is, metaphysically. I argue that we should reject this assumption. I construct an account of linguistic practice involving gender terms that makes no metaphysical claims about what gender is. My linguistic account, I show, explains all of the phenomena that metaphysicians of gender seek to explain. The explanatory power of my linguistic…
Read moreMetaphysicians of gender are united by the assumption that, to explain gendered phenomena like gender-based oppression, we must provide an account of what gender is, metaphysically. I argue that we should reject this assumption. I construct an account of linguistic practice involving gender terms that makes no metaphysical claims about what gender is. My linguistic account, I show, explains all of the phenomena that metaphysicians of gender seek to explain. The explanatory power of my linguistic account reveals that debates over the metaphysics of gender are explanatorily fruitless. If our goal is to explain gendered phenomena like gender-based oppression, we do not need a metaphysics of gender.
