In this paper, we examine and respond to two concerns associated with gender socialization and assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs). After providing an overview of feminist theorists’ work on gender socialization and women’s autonomy, we consider the concern according to which women’s choice to use ARTs to have children may be non-genuinely autonomous due to the influence of oppressive norms on this choice. We call this the autonomous-choice concern. In response to this concern, we argue that only subscribing to an overly demanding account of autonomy yields this conclusion and issue a caution about the implications of subscribing to such an account. Second, we consider the concern according to which the investment of public resources to make certain ARTs more widely accessible amounts to endorsing oppressive norms and may indirectly harm infertile and other women by making these norms more compelling. We call this the norm-legitimation concern. In response, we argue that when appraising the adverse downstream effects associated with legitimizing oppressive norms, it is necessary to consider both the costs of compliance and the costs of non-compliance with these norms, and that their consideration requires a differentiated approach. In closing, we consider objections to the arguments defended in the paper.

Through the colonial period in Sāmoa, Christian morality was embedded into Samoan culture. This transformed gender relations, introducing a new, well-disciplined figure of the Samoan woman. Because of this shift, we argue for the need to develop Samoan feminist thought, which is as much a development of new thinking as it is a return to and restoration of Samoan feminist thought already in existence within Indigenous Samoan cosmologies. We contextualize this thinking within a coalition of Pacific, Indigenous, Black, and women of color feminist thinkers. As feminist scholars have established, feminism doesn’t resonate or work with a simple copy and paste to culture and context. Rather, feminisms are contextual and subjective. It is thus imperative that those from within various contexts continue to broaden understandings and conceptualizations of feminism/s, which work toward demarcating spaces for feminist thought that illuminates multiple, diverse, and intersecting subjectivities and positionalities. As such, the task for us as Samoan women, people, and communities is to develop a feminist space that encompasses and fosters a by-us, for-us, with-us approach that challenges coloniality in Sāmoa and articulates feminist possibilities and futures.

In this paper, I identify a distinctive type of epistemic injustice which I call “identification-based injustice.” In paradigm cases, a prejudiced interlocutor responds to a trans speaker’s gender self-identification (e.g., “I am a woman”) with disbelief or dismissal. This is an everyday form of injustice experienced by trans individuals, and frequently has severe practical consequences. It involves testimony with a particular kind of content, namely self-identification. I argue that because the relevant self-IDs express substantial self-knowledge, the injustice harms the speaker both in their capacity as a knower and in their capacity to be known, by themself and by others. This illuminates a distinctively epistemic obligation on the part of hearers to take trans speakers’ self-identifications seriously.

In recent decades, ethicists have engaged with new developments in human reproductive technologies from a variety of angles. Yet there has been relatively little effort to problematize the concept of reproduction itself. In this paper, we examine the question of what reproduction is and its relationship with biology. We show that reproduction is commonly assumed to entail biological parenthood—an assumption that we term “the biological reproduction paradigm.” Drawing on Sally Haslanger’s analysis of the biological/social division between sex and gender, we suggest that the concept of reproduction is socially constructed, despite its apparently biological nature. In turn, we argue that the supposed necessity of the relationship between reproduction and biological parenthood leads to a situation in which access to a variety of medical, legal, and social goods is constrained on the basis of spurious, inconsistent, and undertheorized assumptions. Finally, we note that, given the socially constructed nature of reproduction, we cannot take it for granted that the term “reproduction” signifies the same thing among different interlocutors and in different contexts.

In this article, I revisit radical, cultural, and lesbian feminist manifestos from the 1960s and 1970s, such as Shulamith Firestone’s The dialectic of sex, the Radicalesbians’ “The woman-identified woman,” and “The fourth world manifesto” by Barbara Burris et al. I highlight a historical and political shift from the nonlinear temporality of the feminist revolution to the spatiality of women’s culture. This shift, overlapping with what feminist historian Alice Echols describes as “an eclipse of radical feminism” by cultural feminism, is symptomatic and indicative of an agential crisis emerging from the utopian drive of radical feminism. The failure or indefinite postponement of the feminist revolution pushed radical feminism toward the spatial politics of separatism, in which cultural and lesbian feminists found temporary yet sustainable refuge from a patriarchal society. The cultural feminist politics of the women’s space offered a utopian refuge for radical feminists whose desire for feminist revolution did not materialize. However, it initiated feminist hostility against transwomen, establishing a historical presage of the contemporary anti-trans feminist movement. In revisiting textual remnants of feminist history, this article critically intervenes with contemporary anti-trans feminist discourse that politically appropriates the cultural legacies of radical feminism in its essentialist tropes of “real women.”

Should citizens have equal say regarding the running of society? Following the principles of democracy, and most of political philosophy: yes (at least at a fundamental level, thus allowing for representatives and the like). Indeed, comparing the main alternative seemingly supports this intuition. Epistocracy would instead give power just to the most epistemically competent. Testing citizens’ political and economic knowledge looks likely to disproportionately disempower marginalized groups, making the position seem like a non-starter and democracy the clear winner. Nevertheless, this paper argues against giving citizens equal say, or at least, it offers the strongest possible motivation for this position. In particular, I introduce the progressive case for epistocracy, and what I term standpoint epistocracy. This account refigures the relevant notion of political competence such that it is not the most privileged classes who would likely constitute our epistocracy, but rather, the least. The resulting picture considerably improves on traditional versions of epistocracy and also democracy.

I bring together the work of Simone de Beauvoir and Elena Ferrante to philosophically analyze envy in girlhood friendships. I compare two kinds of envy: the destructive envy between girls in their mode as object-beings as described by Beauvoir in The second sex (2011); and the more ambivalent form of envy that I identify in Lenu’s friendship with Lila in Ferrante’s The Neapolitan quartet (2012–15) and Beauvoir’s with Zaza in both Memoirs of a dutiful daughter (1963) and The inseparables (2021). Using Beauvoir’s existentialist understanding of subjectivity and freedom in The ethics of ambiguity (1976) and The second sex, I argue that envy for a girl friend’s intellectual abilities can act as an impetus for the girl to pursue new ends in her mode as subject-being, while simultaneously causing her negative feelings. In doing so, I demonstrate that intellectual friendships between girls that feature envy can open up the girl’s situation such that new possibilities of freedom are available to her that may not have been otherwise.

Sylvia Wynter’s sociogenic principle, Chiara Bottici’s feminist mythology, and Denise Ferreira da Silva’s Black feminist praxis of hacking, all underscore the importance of working through the myths, codes, and origin stories that discursively form our world. We identify the biblical story of Solomon’s judgment as an origin story which constitutes an understanding of justice in matters of reproduction that is still hegemonic today, and that must be subverted to realize the Black feminist aim of reproductive justice. Through Solomon’s judgment, justice in reproduction got established as what Édouard Glissant terms, an “obsession with the chain of affiliation” inscribed with the “tragedy of miscegenation,” capturing the maternal in the arché-form of the future subject. We differentiate between the patriarchal configuration of “justice in reproduction” and the feminist concept “reproductive justice,” which is a popular, strong, and important activist concept. To arrive at reproductive justice, a “hack” of the patriarchal configuration of justice in Solomon’s judgment is orchestrated: through a radical affirmation of the events of both abortion and birth, we aim to “explode” the narrative code that constitutes the hegemonic patriarchal understanding of justice, in order to liberate the captive maternal and reimagine reproductive justice within a true feminist mythology.

It is often claimed that gender data gaps (GDGs) are unjust, but the nature of the injustice has not been interrogated. We argue that injustices arising from such data gaps are not merely socio-political but also epistemic: they arbitrarily skew the epistemic landscape in favour of one group over another. GDGs place a greater epistemic burden on women and gender minorities; they have to do more to avoid error and the pay-off is worse: they have a smaller pool of true beliefs on which to act. We suggest that there are both pragmatic and conceptual reasons to differentiate the injustice arising from GDGs from other more familiar varieties (such as testimonial and hermeneutical injustice), and so we introduce the new concept of epistemic deprivation to capture this injustice.

This paper engages with a series of recent literatures that examine how feminist and queer movements have become agents of nationalism, neoliberalism, and global wars. I argue that, while the critique of intersectionality has attempted to curtail the reproductions of such violence within feminism, it too has not been able to resist cooptations into nationalist and capitalist forms of power. Developing an epistemological critique of intersectionality, I arrive at an analysis of identity politics as an elemental identification with phallic power that erases the feminine. Building on the works of Elizabeth Grosz, Wendy Brown, and Luce Irigaray, I suggest that at the core of such feminist alliances with domination lies an unresolved relation to feminine desire as the desire for a non-identitarian politics.

We advance a novel approach to gender inclusive language, showing how it can be used in perinatal and postnatal care. Existing attempts to use language inclusive of trans and non-binary parents have faced objections, prompting calls to use trans-exclusionary “sexed” language as a default (Gribble et al. 2022). We show that these objections attach only to some unsatisfactory attempts at inclusive language. We articulate the moral and communicative goals at stake, and then work through a range of examples to show that no single linguistic strategy can meet these goals in all contexts. A pluralistic approach is needed. Our pluralistic approach draws on gender neutral, gender additive, and second-person locutions, as well as taking advantage of the possibility for multiple targeted communications. Moreover, this pluralistic approach highlights the gaps in research and understanding needed to ensure substantively inclusive care in future.

Luce Irigaray offers a critical account of feminist desire in response to Hegelian, Freudian, and Lacanian models of desire based on lack. However, she reproduces anti-Black and colonial logics within her feminist, supposedly liberatory accounts of desire, thereby creating false utopias and limiting possibilities for liberatory struggle. This article brings Irigaray’s This Sex Which Is Not One (1985) into conversation with theorists in critical Black studies. Drawing on Denise Ferreira da Silva’s articulation of Unpayable Debt (2022) and Joy James’ concept of the captive maternal (James 2015; James 2016; James 2021; James 2022), I offer a radical proposal for the abolition of desire. Following revolutionary abolitionisms’ dual method of destruction and creation, I theorize both the destruction of the death-dealing concepts and practices of desire, as well as a sketch of revolutionary love as the inventive dimension of the abolition of desire. The features of revolutionary love that I engage include a valuing of freedom by any means necessary (including sacrifice) and a commitment to social life that honors and defends unpayable debts. Revolutionary love embodies difference without separability, toward the abolition and decolonization of the (colonial, anti-Black, racial capitalist, cisheteropatriarchal) world as we know it, rather than its reformation.

Much of the existing philosophical literature on BDSM focuses on questions about the ethics of BDSM. But there is an underlying question here regarding the nature of BDSM, one which remains largely unaddressed. In this paper, I take that metaphysical question to be prior to the normative one. In other words: it will be important to have a clear view of what BDSM is before we go on to evaluate it. Accordingly, this is a paper about the nature of BDSM and BDSM activities: what they are like, what makes them unique, and the ways in which these activities might be valuable. Here, I work from the philosophical literature on games to analyze structured erotic encounters (or “scenes”) in BDSM. In the first half of the paper, I argue that BDSM scenes are games, and that understanding them in this way yields important insights into the roles of agency, autonomy, and value in BDSM. In the second half of the paper, I map points of connection between this view of scenes-as-games and the existing literature on BDSM in sexual ethics, in order to illuminate the ways in which a moral evaluation of BDSM scenes might proceed from this analysis.

Theories of moral responsibility have often assumed that praise does not require justification in the way that blame might. Recent accounts of oppressive praise have challenged this and demonstrated that oppressive praise will track and enforce oppressive norms. Existing solutions to the problem of oppressive praise have sought either to redistribute praise or to reorient praise to serve emancipatory goals. These solutions fail to acknowledge how emancipatory norms evolve over time, and the relationship between developing norms and developing practices of praise. This paper offers a practice-dependent account of progressive praise as a solution to oppressive praise, that (i) respects agent’s socially self-governed agency and (ii) does not reinforce oppressive norms, but (iii) can contribute to improvements to the social moral ecology.

The inclusion problem for theories of gender arises when those theories inappropriately fail to include certain individuals in the gender categories to which they ought to belong. The inclusion problem affects both of the most influential traditions in feminist theorizing about gender: social-position accounts and identity accounts. I argue that the inclusion problem can be solved by adopting a structured theory of gender, which incorporates aspects of both social-position accounts and identity accounts. According to the theory I favor, an individual’s gender is determined by their gender identity if they have one; otherwise, it is determined by their social position. My structured theory of gender offers a more direct solution to the gender inclusion problem than alternatives recently advocated by Barnes (2020), Jenkins (2023), and others. It also points the way to a simple solution to inclusion problems that arise at the level of gendered language.

The purpose of this paper is to problematize how the wave narrative maintains and reinforces the hegemony of Western-dominant feminisms while silencing, excluding, appropriating, and/or diluting Othered feminisms and gender-related perspectives. As Western-dominant feminist historicizations travel to the wave narrative, they become the points of reference to all, while Othered historicizations are either erased or Westernized and whitewashed as they travel to the wave narrative. First, to present these problematizations, I will articulate with Edward Said’s travelling theories, Santiago Castro-Gómez’s zero-point hubris, and Linda Alcoff’s speaking for the other. Secondly, I will argue the wave narrative is embedded in Western myths that reinforce its supremacy, including the myths of: (i) true-universal feminisms; (ii) neutral locus of enunciation; (iii) linear-progressive feminist historicization; and (iv) white feminist savior. Finally, I seek to contribute with the theoretical perspectives presented in this paper by focusing on: (1) the importance of understanding from-to/how-by theories and historicizations travel; (2) how Othered epistemologies are located, according to zero-point hubris logics, within hyper-surveilled points of no-observation; and (3) how the dilution and appropriation of Othered stories and epistemologies by Western-dominant feminisms is not simply speaking for Others, but speaking above Others.

This article examines the United Nations Security Council resolutions on women, peace and security (WPS) and argues for an expansion of existing agendas to incorporate security away from the repetition of militarized security, extractive capital, and Western humanism through attention to maritime security. Drawing on posthuman feminisms, critical ocean studies, and decolonial and queer feminist engagements with the ocean, I propose the identification of the ocean as a legal subject to enact an unmooring of the ways in which gendered security is currently thought about, realized, and deployed in legal spaces. The liberal feminist preoccupation with including women and creating gender parity, the radical feminist legal agenda for addressing sexual violence, and the cultural feminist legal reforms that center women’s differences are challenged as reasserting and reifying the status quo of law and legal arrangements. Feminist maritime security, posthuman, with the ocean as subject, contributes ways to think and know law in new registers and addresses the legacy of humanist exclusions of both human and nonhuman subjects. Furthermore, oceanic subjectivity invites reflection on the necessity of terraqueous thinking for planetary survival.

This dialogue between Prof Claire Colebrook (Pennsylvania State University) and Asijit Datta is based on an online discussion, “Ecology, Extinction, and Posthumanism” which took place on the 1st of August, 2020 during the raging days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The transcript echoes Colebrook’s sentiments that the ethical demands of the climate hazard or the imminent extinction cannot be addressed to a particular subject or ‘we’. The predominant tension is concealed in the idea of the human and its values. As humans, we refuse to ask whether there is a future where life continues with endless possibilities for us. For Colebrook, the inability to adopt such a stance emerges from the historical condition that we as language-beings have always been the ones to define life, the ones that are essentially racing towards extinction. Following the extinction experiments of Husserl and Bergson, Colebrook contends that only the death of the ethical and political subject can provide us with alternate modes of survival in this world. This conversation engages with issues like the COVID-19 pandemic, American politics, and post-apocalyptic cinema to arrive at an imagination that requires the annihilation of the human as we know it.

The realities of the Anthropocene, from climate change to pandemics to plastics, necessitate substantially different ways of understanding what it means to act in the world today. In response, feminist scholars within the field of new materialism have attempted to rethink the nature of agency and action. This article focuses on two unresolved challenges with their framework: first, it lacks a way to make distinctions or draw boundaries between different entities and actors and, second, it simplifies the relationship between ontology and ethics, implying that an ontological transformation will lead to more ethical and just relationships with the more-than-human world. I argue that to address these challenges new materialism should look to ecofeminism, particularly the philosophy of Val Plumwood; this pairing is especially pertinent considering the often overlooked or downplayed genealogical connections between them. I also argue, however, that new materialism has something to offer Plumwood: its reconceptualization of agency better responds to contemporary circumstances in ways foreclosed by Plumwood’s more limited account. I conclude that a coalition between new materialism and ecofeminism—a new materialism supplemented and modified by aspects of Plumwood’s account—provides valuable conceptual tools with which to respond to the Anthropocene condition.