Why should ‘better than’ be transitive? The leading answer in ethics is that values do not change with context. But this cannot be the entire source of transitivity, I argue, since transitivity can fail even if values never change, so long as they are complex, with multiple dimensions combined non-additively. I conclude by exploring a new hypothesis: that all alleged cases of nontransitive betterness, such as Parfit’s Repugnant Conclusion, can and should be modelled as the result of complexity, not context-relativity.

This study is a careful examination of the relationships between different components of the alexithymia construct and state versus trait anxiety. In order to study the relations between anxiety and alexithymia in a subclinical population, we administered to 125 female college students a test battery including measures of alexithymia (TAS26), state and trait anxiety (STAI) and depression (QD2A). Results indicated positive correlations between depression, anxiety (state and trait) and alexithymia scores. Partial correlations revealed a tight link between trait anxiety and alexithymia. Furthermore, in agreement with the view that alexithymia is a multidimensional construct, the various alexithymia dimensions were found to be diversely correlated with anxiety. On the basis of partial correlation analyses, a descriptive model of the relationships between depression, state anxiety, trait anxiety and alexithymia was postulated. This model was confirmed by pathways analyses.

The failure of the Supreme Court of Canada to give more than lip service to “context” when considering claims under s. 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms arises largely from the Court's analytic framework, which resists recognizing the social relations of power inherent in complex cases of oppression. The precise nature of the flaws in the Court's analysis is demonstrated in a number of thoughtful feminist critiques that received recognition in the recent decision in R. v. Kapp. While it is too soon to tell whether the Court intends to depart completely from the past decade of s. 15 jurisprudence, equality-seeking groups now have greater opportunities to advance alternative theoretical frameworks for Charter interpretation. This article discusses one such framework, multidimensionality theory, which focuses on the interaction of systems of oppression, conceptualized as an invisible matrix—a vast network of complex, overlapping, interactive, and mutually reinforcing systems. The operation of the systems obscures their effects, and their complexity renders outcomes difficult to predict when they interconnect at sites of subordination and privilege. One can expose the operation of the systems by looking at particular sites of oppression/privilege and considering the contradictions or “inexplicability” of the circumstances based on one system alone. The author argues that the failure of the Charter claim at the heart of the Supreme Court's decision in Native Women's Association of Canada v. Canada demonstrates the need for courts to employ multidimensionality theory in cases of complex oppression. In NWAC, multidimensionality theory reveals that the “dominant” Aboriginal groups were involved in the negotiation/performance of hegemonic masculinities within a racial/colonial context that provided them with justification to suppress NWAC's independent promotion of the interests of Aboriginal women in constitutional negotiations with the government, and that the government was complicit in this performance. By framing the freedom of expression issue as whether NWAC had a “special” right to a speaking platform, and the equality issue as exclusively one of determining whether NWAC could prove the other groups were “male dominated,” the Court fragmented considerations of patriarchy from those of racism and colonization, distorting the synergistic effect of the systems of oppression and reinforcing colonial ideology.

Although intersectionality analysis originates in a critique of legal doctrine and its confining approach to subject formation, intersectionality has been adopted widely outside of legal scholarship—nationally and internationally—to explain how fields of power operate and interact to produce hierarchy for any limitless combination of identities. Yet, within law, some scholars have raised questions precisely about the capacity of intersectionality to grapple with subjects who occupy multiple social positions and those with “partially privileged” identities in particular. Thus, over roughly a decade, a critique took shape about the theoretical capacity and normative commitment of intersectionality theory to address particular subgroups.

This essay tells part of the curious story about how a race-sexuality critique of intersectionality emerged, what may have motivated it, and how it has facilitated an emerging progressive masculinities literature that is “post-intersectional,” i.e., positioned over and against intersectionality. Like other post-intersectionality approaches, multidimensionality theorists decidedly seek to ‘get beyond’ something, and that ‘something’ that underwrites the turn away from intersectionality appears not as substantive theoretical or analytical content, or as political strategy, but rather, as identity-driven and engendered.

The aim of this study was to analyze the reliability and validity evidence of scores on the Spanish version of Self-Description Questionnaire II (SDQ-II). The instrument was administered in a sample of 2022 Spanish students (51.1% boys) from grades 7 to 10. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to examine validity evidence based on internal structure drawn from the scores on the SDQ-II. CFA replicated the correlated 11 first-order factor structure. Furthermore, hierarchical confirmatory factor analysis (HCFA) was used to examine the hierarchical ordering of self-concept, as measured by scores on the Spanish version of the SDQ-II. Although a series of HCFA models were tested to assess academic and non-academic components organization, support for those hierarchical models was weaker than for the correlated 11 first-order factor structure. Results also indicated that scores on the Spanish version of the SDQ-II had internal consistency and test-retest reliability estimates within an acceptable range.