•  62
    The way society is organised means that we all get made into members of various types of people, such as judges, wives, or women. These ‘human social kinds’ may be brought into being by oppressive social arrangements, and people may suffer oppression in virtue of being made into a member of a certain human social kind. This book argues that we should pay attention to the ways in which the very fact of being made into a member of a certain human social kind can be oppressive in and of itself. For…Read more
  •  248
    How To Be A Pluralist About Gender Categories
    In Raja Halwani, Jacob M. Held, Natasha McKeever & Alan Soble (eds.), The Philosophy of Sex: Contemporary Readings. 8th Edition, . pp. 233-259. 2022.
    To investigate the metaphysics of gender categories—categories like “woman,” “genderqueer,” and “man”—is to ask questions about what gender categories are and how they exist. This chapter offers a pluralist account of the metaphysics of gender categories, according to which there are several different varieties of gender categories. I begin by giving a brief overview of some feminist accounts of the metaphysics of gender categories and illustrating how certain moral and political considerations …Read more
  •  64
    Pornography, social ontology, and feminist philosophy
    Apa Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy 20 (1): 18-22. 2020.
    Mari Mikkola’s Pornography: A Philosophical Introduction is a rich, thorough, and important book. With great skill and precision, Mikkola maps the conceptual terrain of pornography; summarises and assesses key debates in the existing literature; and contributes her own insights – chiefly, in my view, an appealing artefactual definition of pornography, and a strong case for a methodological commitment to discussing pornography in a way that is grounded in empirical reality. The result is much mor…Read more
  •  801
    Disability, Impairment, and Marginalised Functioning
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 99 (4): 730-747. 2021.
    One challenge in providing an adequate definition of physical disability is unifying the heterogeneous bodily conditions that count as disabilities. We examine recent proposals by Elizabeth Barnes (2016), and Dana Howard and Sean Aas (2018), and show how this debate has reached an impasse. Barnes’ account struggles to deliver principled unification of the category of disability, whilst Howard and Aas’ account risks inappropriately sidelining the body. We argue that this impasse can be broken usi…Read more
  •  91
    Rape Myths: What are They and What can We do About Them?
    Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 89 37-49. 2021.
    In this paper, I aim to shed some light on what rape myths are and what we can do about them. I start by giving a brief overview of some common rape myths. I then use two philosophical tools to offer a perspective on rape myths. First, I show that we can usefully see rape myths as an example of what Miranda Fricker has termed ‘epistemic injustice’, which is a type of wrong that concerns our role as knowers. Then, I show that it is important to recognise that rape myths are instances of misogyny.…Read more
  •  315
    Ontic Injustice
    Journal of the American Philosophical Association 6 (2): 188-205. 2020.
    In this article, I identify a distinctive form of injustice—ontic injustice—in which an individual is wronged by the very fact of being socially constructed as a member of a certain social kind. To be a member of a certain social kind is, at least in part, to be subject to certain social constraints and enablements, and these constraints and enablements can be wrongful to the individual who is subjected to them, in the sense that they inflict a moral injury. The concept of ontic injustice is val…Read more
  •  80
    Conferralism and Intersectionality: A Response to Ásta’s Categories We Live By
    Journal of Social Ontology 5 (2): 261-272. 2019.
    The conferralist account of social properties that Ásta develops and defends in Categories We Live By is persuasive in many ways. Conferralism could however do better, by its own lights, at handling the phenomenon of intersectionality. This paper first suggests a friendly amendment to the schema for conferrals that Asta offers. This helps to explain the difficulty concerning intersectionality. Finally, the paper suggests a way of developing the conferralist account that would resolve this diffic…Read more
  •  51
    II—Two Routes to Radical Racial Pluralism
    Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 93 (1): 49-68. 2019.
    Quayshawn Spencer argues for radical racial pluralism, the position that there is a plurality of natures and realities for race in the United States. In this paper, I raise two difficulties for Spencer’s argument. The first is targeted narrowly at his response to a potential objection to his argument, and the second is a more general difficulty to do with how the argument handles the social consequences of the authoritative categorization of people. Although the second difficulty is more serious…Read more
  •  48
    Categories We Live By (review)
    The Philosophers' Magazine 83 107-108. 2018.
  •  988
    Toward an Account of Gender Identity
    Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 5. 2018.
    Although the concept of gender identity plays a prominent role in campaigns for trans rights, it is not well understood, and common definitions suffer from a problematic circularity. This paper undertakes an ameliorative inquiry into the concept of gender identity, taking as a starting point the ways in which trans rights movements seek to use the concept. First, I set out six desiderata that a target concept of gender identity should meet. I then consider three analytic accounts of gender ident…Read more
  •  102
    The Wrong of Injustice, by Mari Mikkola (review)
    Mind 127 (506): 618-627. 2018.
    The Wrong of Injustice, by MikkolaMari. Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. 285.
  •  1366
    Feminist analyses of gender concepts must avoid the inclusion problem, the fault of marginalizing or excluding some prima facie women. Sally Haslanger’s ‘ameliorative’ analysis of gender concepts seeks to do so by defining woman by reference to subordination. I argue that Haslanger’s analysis problematically marginalizes trans women, thereby failing to avoid the inclusion problem. I propose an improved ameliorative analysis that ensures the inclusion of trans women. This analysis yields ‘twin’ t…Read more
  •  310
    Rape Myths and Domestic Abuse Myths as Hermeneutical Injustices
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 34 (2): 191-205. 2017.
    This article argues that rape myths and domestic abuse myths constitute hermeneutical injustices. Drawing on empirical research, I show that the prevalence of these myths makes victims of rape and of domestic abuse less likely to apply those terms to their experiences. Using Sally Haslanger's distinction between manifest and operative concepts, I argue that in these cases, myths mean that victims hold a problematic operative concept, or working understanding, which prevents them from identifying…Read more