In this paper I tackle the relationship between language, knowledge and power. To this end, I try to give some reasons for the non-arbitrariness of some words, as well as for the non-arbitrariness of grammatical genders in Romance languages, especially Romanian and French. I focus on several specific linguistic structures and uses of particular words in these two languages. I particularly deal with the construction of a third grammatical gender, the neuter, in Romanian, in comparison to the two grammatical genders (...) existing in French, trying to see how the application of Irigarayís theory on the gender of nouns functions for Romanian language. There is no third grammatical gender in French, and therefore Irigarayís argument is proved to be invalid for Romanian. The questions that lead my analysis are: What corporeality does the third grammatical gender, the neuter in Romanian, point to? How are we to consider neuter words? Is the neuter a necessary and sufficient proof for considering Romanian a less sexist lan- guage? Is the neuter the guarantor of impartiality and equilibrium in a grammatically gendered language? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.2 (2002) 397-404 [Access article in PDF] The Sexist Sublime in Sade and Lyotard Caroline Weber In this case the masculine returns to haunt the place of the feminine like a ghost...., bloody and inhuman, in order to manifest and to root unforgettably in us the idea of a perpetual conflict and a spasm in which life is constantly being cut short. Antonin Artaud, The Theater (...) and Its Double"VIOLENCE," JEAN-FRANÇOIS LYOTARD ASSERTS in a recent article on Kantian aesthetics, "is necessary to the sublime." 1 More precisely, the sublime, held to transport an individual beyond his or her "ordinary" register of aesthetic responses, may do violence to a person's faculty of imagination, by shattering the accepted limits of sensory experience. Lyotard explains: In the sublime, the imagination must be subjected to violence, because it is by way of its suffering, the mediation of its violation, that the joy of seeing—or almost seeing—the law can be obtained.... This "joy" [here Lyotard cites The Critique of Judgment] "is only possible by the mediation of pain." 2Indeed, students of Kant's work have long been familiar with the exclusion of sentiment, pathos, and personal interest that he posits as a requirement for exalted status in the aesthetic and the moral sphere. For Kant, the law is precisely about the painful suppression of pleasure-seeking impulses for the sake of a disinterested, higher good. To achieve the transcendental perfection of the law, typically understood to be the domain of God alone, one must, godlike, overcome the [End Page 397] limitations of human nature and human feeling. And this effort—of which the Passion is just one vivid example—can be extraordinarily painful. In this context, Lyotard's formulation of the problem may not strike us as particularly startling. In contending that the Kantian experience of the sublime requires the mediation of pain, the French poststructuralist appears simply to be reminding us that the law, whether aesthetic or moral in nature, always demands some sort of discomfort, some kind of sacrifice.We might be more inclined to accept this last statement if Lyotard's own work hadn't already taught us to think otherwise. For as he demonstrates admirably in The Differend, his 1983 meditation on testimony and the Holocaust, there is always a winner and a loser under the law; its attendant pains are always selectively applied. From a discursive point of view, this asymmetrical relationship manifests itself in a differend, a situation where two parties find themselves in dispute, and "the 'regulation' of the conflict that opposes them is done in the idiom of one of the parties, while the wrong suffered by the other is not signified in that idiom." 3 According to Lyotard, the suffering of the Jews at the hands of the Nazis exemplifies this pattern. In a strict juridical sense, any attempted protests by concentration camp prisoners had no meaning, and no right to mean anything, in Third Reich Germany: In the differend, something "asks" to be put into phrases, and suffers from the wrong (tort) of not being able to be put into phrases right away. This is when the human beings who thought they could use language as an instrument of communication learn through the feeling of pain... to recognize that what remains to be phrased exceeds what they can presently phrase.... 4Here Lyotard reveals that an encounter with the law, mediated by pain, inevitably creates injustices and wronged parties. In this paper, I will draw on this insight from The Differend to point up the ethical deficiencies or torts inherent in his own ruminations on the Kantian sublime—and in those of another philosopher whose thinking closely resembles Lyotard's on the subject, the notorious Marquis de Sade. To limit the scope of my inquiry, I shall focus in this brief essay on the differend to which each thinker's writings subject the figure of the mother.For Lyotard and Sade alike, the mother represents first and foremost the capacity to reproduce. With this capacity... (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: What is Sexism? Background: Language, Experience, and Recognition Levels of Sexism Two Feminist Views of Sexism Objections.

Since its emergence as an academic discipline in the early 1970s, feminist commentary and scholarship has prosecuted a critique of androcentric or sexist (gender exclusive) language, which has to some extent been successful. The struggle by women to occupy a positive linguistic space is continually being challenged by the endemic nature of masculine bias, which is realized through “indirect” or “subtle” sexism in the community. Seemingly innocuous words, like guy/guys, are frequently used to represent both men and women, reminiscent (...) of the previous use of man/men as gender inclusive common nouns. This raises the question of how to account for the persistence of such language use in spite of the fact that attention is regularly drawn to its problematic character. In this paper we approach the matter in a novel way, by appealing to work in the field of cognitive semantics, in particular the conceptual theory of metonymy. We propose that the relationship between the concepts of masculine and feminine as these are typically structured through language is indicative of a metonymy THE MASCULINE FOR THE FEMININE, in which the masculine “stands for” the feminine and in which lexical items are given as inclusive yet in effect refer to one (normative) gender. A corollary is that the feminine is subsumed (really or virtually) by the presence of the masculine and is made to disappear, and only reappears when she needs to be specified within the contextual frame. (shrink)

Hate speech is a phenomenon which has been in the focus of scholarly interest of linguists, philosophers, sociologists, human-rights advocates, legal and media experts. Much of this interest has been devoted to establishing criteria for identifying what constitutes hate speech across disciplines. In this paper, we argue that hate speech has profiled as a distinct subgenre of the language of politics with typical patterns and ways of addressing which can be recognized in political campaigns across the world. Therefore, we present (...) the findings of the case study of translation exercises of English and Serbian texts containing samples of hateful language during presidential campaigns in the USA and Serbia in 2016 and 2017. Our aim is to identify the linguistico-pragmatic commonalities of hate speech in Serbian and English and examine students’ attitudes towards ethically and morally challenging language contents in their mother tongue and English as their foreign language. The results indicate that in both English and Serbian the same groups are targeted with the hateful language which in both languages uses vulgarisms, taboo words, sexist and chauvinistic declarative expressions to achieve political goals. In addition, L1>L2 and L2>L1 translation data indicate that personal moral and ethical norms in translators are stronger in L1 thus restrictively affecting translational L2>L1 output. (shrink)

The aim of the current research is to investigate the feasibility of identifying offensive language in Lithuanian by utilising the Simplified Offensive Language Taxonomy (SOLT). The key principle behind this taxonomy is its ability to complement existing offensive language ontologies and tagset systems, with the ultimate goal of integrating it into publicly accessible Linguistic Linked Open Data (LLOD) resources. The dataset used in the current study is a publicly available corpus of user-generated comments collected from a Lithuanian portal (Amilevičius et (...) al. 2016). The study identified that offensive language predominantly focuses on collective derogatory language rather than individuals. The most common category of offensive language is related to physical and mental disabilities, followed by ideological offenses, xenophobic and sexist remarks, and less frequent categories like ageism, classism, homophobia, and religious discrimination. These results highlight the diverse range of offensive language online and underscore the need to combat discrimination and promote respectful discourse, particularly concerning marginalised groups. (shrink)

This book calls for the institution of an African feminist philosophy of language, challenging existing debates and encouraging a move away from the Western gaze. The book begins with an analysis of the philosophical context of African feminism, and a call for the decolonization of epistemological discourse. Oyeleye then goes on to consider how indigenous patriarchies play out in the cultural reality of the Yoruba in particular, ontologically unpacking the nature of woman as expressed in language, especially in myths and (...) proverbs. Challenging the derogatory language found in proverbs which entrench patriarchal oppression, the book advocates for postproverbials: new proverbs which draw on old traditions but reconstruct the space of woman in a new, egalitarian rhetorical tradition. The book concludes by outlining the conditions necessary for African feminist philosophers to consider language as a decolonizing space which can help to push through the agenda of social change. This book will be an important resource for researchers from across the fields of gender and women studies, feminist philosophy, philosophy of language, cultural studies, and African studies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Notes and Fragments SARTRE AND SEXISM by Hazel E. Barnes Insofar as is possible, I want to consider here not Sartre the man but Sartre the philosopher—or, more precisely, the philosophy of Sartre. To askwhether Sartre's long association with Simone de Beauvoir was a model of human relations at their best or an example ofbad faith on both sides is not to my present purpose. Nor are his (...) numerous, sometimes rather unsavory affairs with other women. Of course, the man and his work cannot be separated entirely. Sartre himselfadmitted that despite his wholehearted support of women's liberation, there remained in him vestiges of ingrained male chauvinism which he found difficult to eradicate.1 We should expect to find echoes of these in his writing, and we do—not in the ideas but in the imagery and rhetoric, and these not only in the fiction but in the philosophical works. The grossest example is the well-known passage in which Sartre discusses the "existential meanings" ofslime and holes.2 Slime, the great "Antivalue," is "a moist and feminine sucking" and "a sickly-sweet feminine revenge." Moreover—and this is even worse—Sartre allows his meditation on holes to lead by a process of his own associations to the idea ofa woman's sex as "a voracious mouth" evoking the male castration complex. This is not the only place where Sartre links female with notions of a treacherous receptivity. Furthermore, such passages are complemented by others where Sartre employs male sexual imagery to describe the activity of consciousness. Knowledge is portrayed as penetration and conquest. He points out, without objecting, that banal metaphors of everyday language suggest that "knowing" has overtones of carnal knowing and sexual violation: "What is seen is possessed; to see is to deflower.... The unknown object is given as immaculate, as Philosophy and Literature, © 1990, 14: 340-347 Hazel E. Barnes341 virgin, comparable to a whiteness.... Man has not yet 'snatched' its secret away from it.... Figures of speech... like that of the 'unviolated depths of nature' suggest the idea ofsexual intercourse more plainly."3 There can be no doubt that a full investigation ofthe linguistic codes in Sartre's writing would reveal him to be a man comfortably ensconced in a world of male dominance. Yet Collins and Pierce in their excellent article, "Holes and Slime: Sexism in Sartre's Psychoanalysis," even as diey deplore Sartre's sexist language and his failure to depict any fictional female characters as embodiments of existential authenticity, admit that these weaknesses are at variance with the central philosophy ofBeing and Nothingness and not derived logically from it.4 I agree, and diat is why I hold that the sexism is there but is contingent, relevant to our appraisal of die writer but not essential to ourjudgment on the philosophy and its potential value as a support to feminism. In saying this I am partially making the sort of distinction employed by Jean Grimshaw, who points out that a philosophy built on male assumptions may exclude women essentially as with Kant, inconsistendy as with Aristode, or inadvertendy as with Descartes.5 The difference with Sartre is that in spite of the occasional lapse into traditional male linguistic tropes, the work, like its author, is notjust theoretically egalitarian but concerned explicidy with forms of oppression and the problems of disfavored groups. More than that of any other male writer, Sartre's philosophy seems to me to demand feminism as one of its natural consequences. That diis has been historically true is shown, ofcourse, by the fact that Simone de Beauvoir used Sartrean existentialism as the foundation for her own original analysis of women's situation in TL· Second Sex. The irony is diat this book, which played a key role in launching the movement for women's liberation throughout the world, has been adversely criticized by later feminists precisely on the grounds of its Sartrean orientation, along with Beauvoir's emphasis on women's right to share the things men value rather than to challenge those values. Beauvoir herself later recognized that the book did not go far enough, but she never renounced what she had written there. My claim... (shrink)

For many women and girls sexist and misogynistic language is an everyday experience. Some instances of this speech can be categorized as ‘sexist hate speech’, as not only having an insulting or degrading character towards the individuals to whom the speech is addressed, but also resonating with the entire group, contributing to its silencing, marginalization and exclusion. The aim of this article is to examine how sexist hate speech is handled in international human rights law. The argument derives from the (...) claim than that legal discourse should distinguish between ‘sexist speech’ and ‘sexist hate speech’, and that the later may be qualified as a form of violence against women. Then it analyses the approaches of two human rights protection systems—the United Nations and the Council of Europe system—towards the phenomenon of sexist hate speech, by taking their position towards hate speech in general as a point of reference. In both systems, sexist hate speech is being addressed more eagerly under the gender equality framework, including counteracting violence against women, than in their interpretation of hate speech under general human rights law. The article argues the importance of recognizing and addressing sexist hate speech both within the framework of gender equality instruments and anti-hate speech framework established by international human rights bodies. (shrink)

Critics across the political spectrum have worried that ordinary uses of words like 'racist', 'sexist', and 'homophobic' are becoming conceptually inflated, meaning that these expressions are getting used so widely that they lose their nuance and, thereby, their moral force. However, the charge of conceptual inflation, as well as responses to it, are standardly made without any systematic investigation of how 'racist' and other expressions condemning oppression are actually used in ordinary language. Once we examine large linguistic corpora to see (...) how these expressions are actually used, we find that English speakers have a rich linguistic repertoire for qualifying the degree to which and dimensions along which something is racist, sexist, homophobic, and so on. These facts about ordinary usage undermine the charge of conceptual inflation. Without awareness of facts about ordinary usage, theorists risk making linguistic prescriptions that are unnecessary or counterproductive. (shrink)

In this book, Claire Horisk argues that the real problem with so-called offensive jokes-such as racist, sexist, and ethnic jokes-is not that they are offensive but that they are harmful, because they transmit and reinforce stereotypes and ideas that contribute to a network of unjust disadvantage for the derogated group. She distinguishes between belittling jokes, which shore up unjust disadvantage for social groups, and disparaging jokes, which derogate powerful groups such as doctors but do not contribute to unjust disadvantage. She (...) uses philosophy of language and linguistics to argue that both belittling and disparaging jokes communicate ideas by generalized conversational implicature, and to argue that defenses of derogatory remarks as 'just a joke' are inadequate, because jokes can be used to convey what people believe to be true. She focuses on jokes in ordinary conversation, showing that canonical accounts of cooperative conversation need to be enriched: Some people have greater power to shift the common ground of a conversation, and to introduce new presuppositions, than others, and there are alliances that exclude some parties to the conversation, and yet are powerful in setting the future course of the conversation. She also gives a new account of the morality of listening, arguing that sometimes people who listen to derogatory speech may be culpable for doing so. Throughout, she draws on a wealth of interdisciplinary evidence to support the book's claims and to explain why humor is an especially effective means of unjust discrimination. (shrink)

Kant is famous for his universalist moral theory, which emphasizes human dignity, equality, and autonomy. Yet he also defended sexist and (until late in his life) racist views. In this essay, I address the question of how current readers of Kant should deal with Kant’s sexism and racism. I first provide a brief description of Kant’s views on sexual and racial hierarchies, and of the way they intersect. I then turn to the question of whether we should set aside (...) Kant’s sexism and racism or ‘translate’ his egalitarian principles into inegalitarian ones. I argue for a third position, namely, that we should highlight the tensions that pervade Kant’s theory. In the final section, I argue that the use of inclusive language and female pronouns in recent discussions of Kant’s moral and political philosophy carries significant risks. I end by articulating several preconditions for fruitfully using Kant’s moral principles to criticize sexism and racism. (shrink)

In this second volume, Book III looks at another irreal language, that of games/sports, and discusses how it functions metaphorically to serve power's interests. Book IV offers an analysis of language as multiple forms of oppression (racism, sexism, classism, ageism, speciesism [humanism]}. It reveals how such a language is constructed, both in formal as well as in individual language. It also shows how power is a consequence of structured inequalities built into language itself, producing, in its "wake," languages of (...) resistance. Book V brings together a number of themes, including play, language as commanding, institutional power, and proper names. (shrink)

Derogatory terms (racist, sexist, ethnic, and homophobic epithets) are bully words with ontological force: they serve to establish and maintain a corrupt social system fuelled by distinctions designed to justify relations of dominance and subordination. No wonder they have occasioned public outcry and legal response. The inferential role analysis developed here helps move us away from thinking of the harms as being located in connotation (representing mere speaker bias) or denotation (holding that the terms fail to refer due to inaccurate (...) descriptive content). The issue is not bad attitudes or referential misfires. An inferential role semantic analysis of derogatory terms shows exactly what is at stake between those who argue that the terms should be eliminated (Absolutists) and those who claim they can be successfully rehabilitated (Reclaimers). The Reclaimer maintains, and the Absolutist denies, that certain contexts can detach the derogatory force from deeply derogatory terms. The article looks at these claims with respect to ‘nigger’ and ‘dyke,’ setting out the inferential role of each term and examining detachability potential. Explaining detachability in terms of linguistic commitments, this article also addresses the issue of whether such terms count as political discourse, and examines the implications of that issue. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explore some trans and feminist concerns about the gendered aspects of languages beyond English, focusing in particular on Spanish, Italian, and German. Historically, discussions about gendered language have often challenged the ways in which language can make women (in)visible by addressing the implicit and explicit androcentrism and sexism in our language. We call this the visibility project. Recently, questions surrounding trans-inclusiveness and the possibility of avoiding gender markers altogether have become more prominent, (...) often highlighting the issue of pronouns (e.g. the singular "they*). We call this the gender-neutrality project. However, anglophone philosophy offers a very limited discussion on how either gender-neutrality or visibility strategies could be applied to languages more gendered than English. To address this, we start by showing how gender expresses itself in the grammatical structure of our three sample languages, and identifying some of the specific visibility and neutrality strategies that could be (or are already) applied to them. This leads us to articulate an "innovative project which constructs nuanced and novel ways to transform gendered grammatical structures. Depending on their application, these strategies can fulfil gender-neutrality goals in some cases and visibility goals in others. This highlights, among other things, the ways in which genderqueer people have attempted to shape their linguistic resources in different linguistic contexts, while also opening up avenues for new research when it comes to discussions of gender and language. (shrink)

Derogatory terms (racist, sexist, ethnic, and homophobic epithets) are bully words with ontological force: they serve to establish and maintain a corrupt social system fuelled by distinctions designed to justify relations of dominance and subordination. No wonder they have occasioned public outcry and legal response. The inferential role analysis developed here helps move us away from thinking of the harms as being located in connotation (representing mere speaker bias) or denotation (holding that the terms fail to refer due to inaccurate (...) descriptive content). The issue is not bad attitudes or referential misfires. An inferential role semantic analysis of derogatory terms shows exactly what is at stake between those who argue that the terms should be eliminated (Absolutists) and those who claim they can be successfully rehabilitated (Reclaimers). The Reclaimer maintains, and the Absolutist denies, that certain contexts can detach the derogatory force from deeply derogatory terms. The article looks at these claims with respect to ‘nigger’ and ‘dyke,’ setting out the inferential role of each term and examining detachability potential. Explaining detachability in terms of linguistic commitments, this article also addresses the issue of whether such terms count as political discourse, and examines the implications of that issue. (shrink)

In I'd Rather Be Dead Than Be a Girl, John Marcus Sweeney explains a threefold thesis of a study that language influences how human beings perceive reality, that the development of theoretical constructs can help explain resistances to and possibilities for inclusive language, and that the implementation of inclusive language is an important goal for religious education." "The study begins with a description of the problem to be considered, that is, the role of sexist language in perpetuating sexual discrimination. Beginning (...) in the third chapter, insights from Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy of organism, Benjamin Lee Whorf's principle of linguistic relativity, and Jean Piaget's genetic epistemology are used to investigate the stubbornness of sexist linguistic habits and the bases for developing inclusive linguistic habits. Finally, inclusive language is shown to be important for religious education, and some strategies for implementing inclusive language are presented."--Jacket. (shrink)

We provide a qualitative analysis of resistance to calls for gender-neutral language. We analyzed more than 900 comments responding to two essays—one on AlterNet and another on Vox posted to the Vox editor’s Facebook page—that critiqued a pervasive male-based generic, “you guys.” Five rhetorics of resistance are discussed: appeals to origins, appeals to linguistic authority, appeals to aesthetics, appeals to intentionality and inclusivity, and appeals to women and feminist authorities. These rhetorics justified “you guys” as a nonsexist term, thereby allowing (...) commenters to continue using it without compromising their moral identities as liberals or feminists. In addition to resisting an analysis that linked their use of “you guys” to social harms, commenters positioned the authors who called for true generics as unreasonable, divisive, and authoritarian. We conclude with suggestions for how feminists can challenge the status quo and promote social change. (shrink)

Language matters to feminism because language is a structure of significances that governs our lives. It contains and conveys the categories through which we understand ourselves and others, and through which we become who and what we are. Our linguistic practices are constituted largely by inferences which in turn constitute or contribute to our understanding of the connections (causal and otherwise) between things. These inferential roles and patterns, which are normatively inscribed, give order and significance to the categories. Once we (...) realize that our linguistic categories reflect and are reflected by our social categories, and once we see that our discursive practices are normative, it is a short step to see language as an arena of political struggle. Feminism is, at the very least, a struggle to end sexist oppression by eradicating both the means by which oppression is carried out and the ideology that seeks that it be carried out. As our most powerful and yet nuanced symbol system, language is perhaps the primary means by which the ideology of sexism is developed and reinforced; it is not news that language is an instrument of oppression. A narrow focus on sexist semantics is of limited use to feminist philosophers, for at best such studies yield lists of past and present harms, with little more to add than “stop it, now.” The real promise of philosophy of language for feminists is an understanding of articulated normativity; by understanding how language really works, we might just understand how the rabbit of normativity gets pulled from the hat of articulation. Language is normative in its production and reproduction of social norms by way of its content, by way of its forms, and most especially by way of its constitutive discursive practices. Once we understand how women are paradoxically constituted by and yet erased from discourse, we may use what we know of these processes of articulation and legitimation to effect and explain our reconstitution as whole. (shrink)

This article draws upon data collected as part of a 25-year longitudinal analysis of televised coverage of women’s sports to provide a window into how sexism operates during a postfeminist sociohistorical moment. As the gender order has shifted to incorporate girls’ and women’s movement into the masculine realm of sports, coverage of women’s sports has shifted away from overtly denigrating coverage in 1989 to ostensibly respectful but lackluster coverage in 2014. To theorize this shift, we introduce the concept of (...) “gender-bland sexism,” a contemporary gender framework that superficially extends the principles of merit to women in sports. Televised news and highlight shows frame women in uninspired ways, making women’s athletic accomplishments appear lackluster compared to those of men’s. Because this “bland” language normalizes a hierarchy between men’s and women’s sports while simultaneously avoiding charges of overt sexism, this article contributes to gender theory by illuminating how women can be marginalized in male-dominated, male-controlled settings via individualized merit-based assessments of talent. (shrink)

_Gendered Agents_, edited by Silvestra Mariniello andPaul A. Bové, presents essays by influential feminist theorists who challenge traditional Western epistemology and suggest new directions for feminism. By examining both literary and historical discourses, such critics as Gayatri Spivak, Hortense Spillers, and Lauren Berlant assess questions of sexuality, ethics, race, psychoanalysis, subjectivity, and identity. Gathered from various issues of the journal _boundary 2_, the essays in _Gendered Agents_ seek to transform the model of Western academic knowledge by restructuring its priorities and (...) values. In the introduction, Mariniello urges feminists to begin anew but take as their starting place the achievements of feminism and feminist theory: an understanding of language that considers the implications of silence, the motivation to decompartmentalize experience, and the acknowledgement that everything is political._ _Challenging both a canonical organization of knowledge and the persistently self-referential "ghettoization" of feminism, contributors subsequently tackle subjects as diverse as pre-Marxist France, the American fetus, black intellectuals, queer nationality, and the art of literary interpretation. _Contributors_. Lauren Berlant, Karen Brennan, Margaret Cohen, Nancy Fraser, Elizabeth Freeman, Carol Jacobs, Silvestra Mariniello, Larysa Mykyta, Laura Rice, Ivy Schweitzer, Doris Sommer, Hortense J. Spillers, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Judith Wilt. (shrink)

This paper describes how language contributes to the oppression and exploitation of animals by animal product industries. Critical Discourse Analysis, a framework usually applied in countering racism and sexism, is applied to a corpus of texts taken from animal industry sources. The mass confinement and slaughter of animals in intensive farms depend on the implicit consent of the population, signaled by its willingness to buy animal products produced in this way. Ideological assumptions embedded in everyday discourse and that of (...) the animal industries manufacture and maintain this consent. Through analysis of texts, this paper attempts to expose these assumptions and discusses implications for countering the domination and exploitation of animals. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Gender in The Gay ScienceKathleen Marie HigginsIn his recent novel, When Nietzsche Wept, Irwin Yalom reiterates a common portrait of Nietzsche: a sexist über alles. Much as the quip “Isn’t business ethics a contradiction in terms?” ubiquitously accosts philosophers involved in that subdiscipline, “What’s a nice girl like you doing studying a misogynist like that?” has haunted my career in Nietzsche scholarship. I have never been entirely certain as (...) to whether this ad hominem is more directed at me or at Nietzsche.A sympathetic but jovial colleague played on this ambiguity by remarking, when he heard my topic for this essay, “Yes, that must be an interesting topic for someone who isn’t even shallow.” Yes, Nietzsche did say that women, far from deep, were not even shallow. But does this remark prove him a sexist? Are we even certain what it means?I will attempt to complicate our appraisal of Nietzsche’s alleged sexism by focusing on Book Two of The Gay Science. Considering his passages on women in that book, I will suggest along the way reasons why at least some readings of these as sexist should be rejected. More positively, I will show that these passages urge a reassessment of the relationship between men and women that can be seen as a contribution toward feminist theory (if an unwitting one), and that one of Nietzsche’s intended impacts on his male readers is to initiate a radical revolution in their thinking about women.IThe term “gender” is used advisedly in this context, for Nietzsche made the distinction, common in feminist discussion, between sex (the biological potential to play one role rather than another in [End Page 227] reproduction) and gender (the contingently assigned roles that a society attaches to those who are biologically male or female). Nietzsche urged his readers to recognize the contingency of gender roles and to consider the desirability of changing them.We can hardly begin to consider Nietzsche’s suggestions in these regards, however, without confronting the allegation that Nietzsche was a paradigmatic sexist. Although many of the most important names in Western philosophy have been singled out for feminist censure, Nietzsche is often held up as an exemplar of all that is misogynistic, both in the philosophical tradition and within patriarchy generally. Nietzsche is identified as a misogynist for a variety of reasons. He is seen as an essentialist, an opponent of women’s rights, an enthusiast of masculine virtue, and an advocate of male domination. While none of these attributions may be entirely apt, I agree with Nietzsche’s feminist critics that he was, at least sometimes, too willing to rest content with truisms about women and to vent personal rage in the guise of philosophy.That said, some of the attacks on Nietzsche are both unfair and unfortunate. I am not the only feminist to think so. Maudemarie Clark, Sarah Kofman, Maryanne Bertram, and Deborah Bergoffen have all suggested that certain of Nietzsche’s views offer starting points for feminist theorizing. I will describe some attacks made on Nietzsche by certain other feminists, however, because they represent the popular perspective on Nietzsche (if not that most typical of Nietzsche scholars) and because they indicate certain pitfalls that feminists would do best to avoid.Carol Diethe’s article “Nietzsche and the Woman Question,” for example, criticizes Nietzsche in a number of unwarranted ways. Consider, for example, her complaint that Nietzsche’s conception of the will to power entails an affirmation of the domination of women.If we take his key concept, the will to power, we find that it is so gender based that it practically comes to represent the archetypal phallic symbol. Bernstein describes it as a phenomenon which includes the “will to violate” so that the “feeling of power” (Machtgefühl) is generated, yet when he goes on to mention “Nietzsche’s desire to avoid reducing the will to power to sexuality,” he fails to realize that his own critique has relied heavily on the language of rape and the whole area of male dominance of women which stretches behind words such as “violation.” 1Diethe simply accepts Bernstein’s characterization of Nietzsche’s... (shrink)

The proposed new geological era, The Anthropocene (aka Age of Humans, Age of Man), marking human domination of the planet long called Mother Earth, is truly The Age of the Motherfucker. The ecocide of the Anthropocene comes from Man, the Western- and masculine- identified corporate, military, intellectual, and political class that masks itself as the exemplar of the civilized and the human. The word motherfucker was invented by the enslaved children of White slavemasters to name their mothers' rapist/owners. Man's strategic (...) motherfucking, from the personal to the planetary, is invasion, exploitation, spirit-breaking, extraction and toxic wasting of individuals, communities, and lands, for reasons of pleasure, plunder, and profit. Ecocide is attempted deicide of Mother Nature-Earth, reflecting Man's goal to come the god he first made in his own image. The motivational word Motherfucker further reveals the Anthropocene with a flip side signifying an outstanding, formidable, and inexorable force. Mother Nature-Earth is that "Mutha'" -- one defying translation into heteropatriarchal classifications of gender, one capable of overwhelming Man and not the other way around. Drawing upon Indigenous and African American scholarship, ecofeminism, ecowomanism, green activism, femme, queer, and gender non-binary philosophies, literature and arts, Afrofuturism, and popular culture, Call Your "Mutha'" contends that the Anthropocene is not evidence of Man's supremacy over nature, but that Mother Nature-Earth, faced with disrespect, is going away. It is imperative now to call the "Mutha'" by decolonizing land, bodies, and minds, ending rapism, feeding the green, renewing sustaining patterns and affirming devotion to Mother Nature-Earth. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 267-278 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Healing Deconstruction: Postmodern Thought in Buddhism and Christianity Healing Deconstruction: Postmodern Thought in Buddhism and Christianity. Edited by David Loy. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996. 120 pp. The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.--Karl Marx, Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach Healing Deconstruction, edited by David Loy, is a collection of (...) essays which are situated by and elaborate the intersection of radical Christian, Buddhist, and deconstructionist discourses. With the exception of "Mindfulness of the Selves" by Morny Joy, all of these essays were first presented at the Fourth International Buddhist-Christian [End Page 267] Dialogue conference in Boston in 1992. While each author addresses different aspects of problems associated with suffering, the self, language, and healing, they share certain poststructuralist sensibilities in common and, with the exception of Robert Magliola, share a commitment to developing "a more holistic praxis" (p. 2). The title of this volume is, says Loy, "intentionally ambiguous. On the one side, it emphasizes the healing possibilities of deconstruction in a field where the deconstructive turn has too often been understood reductively" and on the other, it "refers to the potential healing power of this dialogue for deconstruction itself, whose critique of logocentrism had led to a rupture within contemporary thought" (ibid.). 1 The authors both affirm "the liberating and healing potential of de-essentialized concepts and images, language, bodies and symbols" and maintain "that actually realizing this healing potential requires a move from theorizing to practice, for only that can truly deconstruct the self" (p. 10).Chief among the problems they identify as presenting barriers to developing a new way of relating to the world and a new self are dualistic thinking and the notion of the autonomous self. Each of the authors contributes to comprehending the philosophical factors that foster the creation of these barriers and what may be done philosophically to dismantle them. Moreover, Philippa Berry, Joy, and Magliola not only deploy Christian, Buddhist, deconstructionist, and feminist tactics to dismantle these barriers, they also articulate alternative modes of relating to the world.Creating new ways of relating to the world and new senses of self are clearly in order. Profit-driven global development, enforced by U.S. directed, taxpayer financed military power, is not only fostering the growth of illiteracy, homelessness, poverty, slave labor, and starvation for hundreds of millions of persons worldwide it is also threatening the biological basis of life. To make matters worse, revolutions in communication, transportation, and weapons systems have accelerated the rate at which these processes are developing around the world. The left used to say: either socialism or barbarism. Today we might say, either a way of life or death. In light of the fact that, as Joy indicates, "[r]acism, sexism, and classism still pervade our social structures in ways that damage the lives of billions of people"; it is clear that we need "a new way of relating to the world: a different sense of self" (pp. 71, 97). It is no exaggeration to claim that we must build an alternative mode of being and becoming to that which presently exists in order to ensure that all human beings are able to enjoy the rich abundance of life. The authors in Healing Deconstruction make diverse contributions to this end and provocatively stimulate our thinking about how we might best create an alternative mode of human existence.Their contributions suffer, however, from problems which are, among other things, symptomatic of the state of critical theory and politics as we begin the twenty-first century. With the triumph of global capitalism and the retrenchment of the political right, critical theory and politics, particularly in their academic manifestations, have in large measure retreated from the radical agendas that characterized political movements in the 1960s. Whereas anticolonial, civil rights, antiracist, feminist, indigenous, environmental, and working class organizations and movements sought to transform existing institutions in order to insure universal access to social, [End Page 268] political, and economic resources, most liberals and many... (shrink)

This article argues that the real promise of feminist philosophy of language is in its account of articulated normativity. Feminist philosophy of language began within a descriptivist framework, seeking to identify and root out sexist discursive practices, like naming practices that subsume women’s identity under men’s, descriptive practices that erase or undermine women’s accomplishments and presence as subjects, and so on. This approach had its limits, and led to increased attention to the discursive practices through which we articulate our experiences (...) and construct our lives. Examining the core frameworks through which feminists have analyzed the power of language to shape social reality and construct social selves, this article shows how language is normative in its production and reproduction of social norms by way of its content, forms, and constitutive discursive practices. The article urges feminists to use knowledge of the processes of articulation and legitimation to effect and explain feminist reconstitution of women as whole. (shrink)

The verb to legitimate is often used in political discourse in a way that is prima facie perplexing. To wit, it is often said that an actor legitimates a practice which is officially prohibited in the relevant context – for example, that a worker telling sexist jokes legitimates sex discrimination in the workplace. In order to clarify the meaning of statements like this, and show how they can sometimes be true and informative, we need an explanation of how something that (...) is officially illegitimate can have a kind of ersatz legitimacy conferred on it, and how this can occur even when the actor ‘doing the legitimating’ lacks formal authority. I examine one putative explanation centred around the phenomenon of normalization, and I highlight some advantages that this account has in comparison to an alternative explanation, one that makes reference to the phenomenon of licensed authority. (shrink)

The author explores with the leading scholars of today the way and extent to which many forms of oppression, such as racism, classism, capitalism, sexism, and linguicis, have affected the women, poor working-class people, queer people, students of color, female faculty and faculty of color. The leading scholars are: Richard Delgado, David Gillborn , Zeus Leonardo, Antonia Darder, Howard Winant, Christine Sleeter, Sonia Nieto, Carl Grant, Peter McLaren, Noam Chomsky, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Pedro Noguera, and Dave Stovall. Sometimes immensely personal, (...) the interviews unveil the how far America has come, and just how far we have to go, in the quest for equality for all its citizens. (shrink)

Thoughts of Luce Irigaray on feminism, sexism in language, and its relation to social conditions in Indonesia.

Reading the animal text in the landscape of the damned looks at the diverse texts of our everyday world relating to nonhuman animals and examines the meanings we imbibe from them. It describes ways in which we can explore such artefacts, especially from the perspective of groups and individuals with little or no power. This work understands the oppression of nonhuman animals as being part of a spectrum incorporating sexism, racism, xenophobia, economic exploitation and other forms of oppression. The (...) enquiry includes, physical landscapes, the law, women’s rights, history, slavery, language use, economic coercion, farming, animal experimentation and much more. Reading the animal text in the landscape of the damned is an academic work but is accessible, theoretically based but robustly practical and it encourages the reader to take this enquiry further for both themselves and for others. (shrink)

In this lively and entertaining book, Terence Ball maintains that 'classic' works in political theory continue to speak to us only if they are periodically re-read and reinterpreted from alternative perspectives. That, the author contends, is how these works became classics, and why they are regarded as such. Ball suggests a way of reading that is both 'pluralist' and 'problem-driven'--pluralist in that there is no one right way to read a text, and problem-driven in that the reinterpretation is motivated by (...) problems that emerge while reading these texts. In addition, the subsequent readings and interpretations become more and more suffused with the interpretations of others. This tour de force, always entertaining and eclectic, focuses on the core problems surrounding many of the major thinkers. Was Machiavelli really amoral? Why did language matter so much to Hobbes--and why should it matter to us? Are the roots of the totalitarian state to be found in Rousseau? Were the utilitarians sexist in their view of the franchise? The author's aim is to show how a pluralist and problem-centered approach can shed new light on old and recent works in political theory, and on the controversies that continue over their meaning and significance. Written in a lively and accessible style, the book will provoke debate among students and scholars alike. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 42, no. 3. © 2016 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 575 Geneviève Pagé Gender at the Crossing: Ideological Travelings of US and French Thought in Montreal Feminism This article recounts a story about Montreal feminism using the narrative thread of its conceptual language. It is a story of language as a political choice that guides our actions, but also language as a political issue, a barrier, a tool (...) that structures our thinking and that reflects and reproduces relations of power in knowledge production and dissemination. Gender is the central character in this story—its role representing the way US, French, and Quebec theoretical traditions are deeply in dialogue with each other; yet this dialogue is arbitrary and filled with long silences. In reviewing the dialogue, this article identifies a few elements that play a significant role in favoring or impeding the traveling of ideas and concepts, focusing, in the case of Quebec, on how part of the feminist movement, comprised of radical or “revolutionary” feminists, engages with and constructs theory. The article begins by briefly tracing the evolving meanings of gender in the United States from the 1920s to the twenty-first century. Then, turning to France, a second section identifies elements limiting the traveling of US understandings of gender in French feminist theory, especially the predominance of specific traditions of thought, namely existentialism and Marxism, leading to different ways of thinking about oppression, patriarchy, sexism, and the idea of womanhood. In a third section, I shift the focus to Quebec, particularly Francophone Montreal, to survey its feminist thought, political traditions, and 576 Geneviève Pagé translation. Its history, its people, and its geographic location put it at the convergence of US and French influences, but with a distinct added local imperative: the struggle for national liberation. The specific ways in which Quebec nationalism has foregrounded power and politics around language has had a major impact on how Quebec feminists have negotiated relations with their southern feminist neighbors. In this sense, Quebec feminism presents an excellent case study of language operating as an axis of power. Furthermore, in the context of globalization and resistances to globalizing processes, Montreal provides a perfect example by which to highlight both transnational influences and local specificities. Montreal, as a classic example of Mary Louise Pratt’s cultural and linguistic “contact zone”—the space where communities of practices interact—is a city in which one can clearly identify “the intellectual and linguistic points of contact between cultures, and make visible the political pressure that activates them.”1 I treat translations that occur in this context as the process of connecting and communicating between communities. As queer theorist Juana María Rodríguez has noted in another context, “the process of translation involves more than merely translating languages; it involves translating cultures, values, and institutions of power.”2 Similarly, translation here involves an exchange between symbolic and semiotic structures of both the original and the new communities. Zooming out of Montreal, I then address the politics of translation on a more global scale, pointing out the particular ways the production and dissemination of knowledge is especially beholden to market relations. All these reflections help us understand the traveling of ideas, concepts, and ideologies across linguistic barriers. I conclude that it is in the interest of feminists to pay particular attention to what knowledge is produced from different standpoints and in different languages and what it can teach us. 1. Mary Louise Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone,” Profession (1991): 34; Sherry Simon, Gender in Translation: Cultural Identity and the Politics of Transmission (New York: Routledge, 1996), 36. 2. Juana María Rodríguez, Queer Latinidad: Identity Practices, Discursive Spaces (New York: NYU Press, 2003), 19. Geneviève Pagé  577 Gender in the United States It is among US feminists that the conceptualization of the gender/sex dichotomy first developed. However, gender—the word—ironically comes to English from the French genre and shares with that word its derivation from the Latin genus, meaning “kind,” “sort,” or “type.” The derivation is most visible in the borrowing in English of the French genre, for example, in literary forms such as fiction or poetry. Similarly, both the English... (shrink)

This research compares and analyzes the verbal commentary of televised coverage of two women's and men's athletic events: the “final four” of the women's and men's 1989 National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball tournaments and the women's and men's singles, women's and men's doubles, and the mixed-doubles matches of the 1989 U.S. Open tennis tournament. Although we found less overtly sexist commentary than has been observed in past research, we did find two categories of difference: gender marking and a “hierarchy of (...) naming” by gender and, to a certain extent, by race. These differences are described and analyzed in light of feminist analyses of gendered language. It is concluded that televised sports commentary contributes to the construction of gender and racial hierarchies by marking women's sports and women athletes as “other,” by infantilizing women athletes, and by framing the accomplishments of women athletes ambivalently. (shrink)

Studie over verborgen seksistische uitdrukkingen in de Nederlandse taal.

J.L. Austin argues that ordinary language should be used to identify when it is appropriate or inappropriate to make, accept, or reject knowledge claims. I criticize Austin’s account: In our ordinary life, we often accept justifications rooted in racism, sexism, ableism, and classism as reasons to dismiss knowledge claims or challenges, despite the fact such reasons are not good reasons. Austin’s Ordinary Language Epistemology (OLE) classifies the discounting of knowledge claims in classic cases of epistemic injustice as legitimate ordinary (...) maneuvers. I provide recommendations for revision of OLE and offer a means of distinguishing between dismissals in cases of epistemic injustice and their legitimate counterparts. (shrink)

This essay locates Jean-Luc Nancy's analyses, developed in relation to three invented terms, expeausition, excription, sexistence, in a threefold context: between Immanuel Kant on experience and Heidegger on existence; with Derrida on rethinking life and death ( lavielamort); and as a response to the alteration in phenomenology consequent on a transposition of key themes out of the German speaking context of the analyses of Husserl and Heidegger into the French language context of the French reception. An intensification ( survie) of (...) life forces may arrive in a ‘living on’ ( survivre) where thought processes only partially brought to expression in the lifetimes of their originators acquire precision and definition in moments of extremity, danger and horror, adding a fourth dimension to the initial three. (shrink)

This paper seeks to make “racism” strange, by exploring its invocation in the sociolinguistic context of LGBTQI+ activism in Greece, where it is used in ways that may be jarring to anglophone readers. In my ongoing research on the conceptualisation of interwoven oppressions in Greek social movement contexts, I have been interested in understanding how the widespread use of the term “racism” as a superordinate category to reference forms of oppression not only based on “race,” “ethnicity,” and “citizenship” (e.g., racism, (...) nationalism, xenophobia) but also those based on gender, gender identity, and sexuality (e.g., sexism, transphobia, and homophobia) relates to the increased adoption of “intersectionality” in movement discourses. In ordinary parlance, this commonplace usage of “racism” as an “umbrella term” nevertheless retains its etymological link to “race,” while its scope is extended to other regimes of superiority/inferiority or privilege/oppression. If intersectionality presupposes that oppressions are ontologically multiple and analytically separable, the use of “racism” as an umbrella concept seems to point in the other direction, implying that all forms of oppression originate from a common source, have a similar ontological basis, or generate privilege for the same social agents, who deploy similar tactics vis-à-vis oppressed groups. My research examines how intersectionality—widely understood as a multi-axial theory of oppression, which contends that power relations are multiple, distinct, and irreducible to one another, yet converge simultaneously in the experiences of multiply oppressed social groups—relates to the use of “racism” as a struggle concept in Greek, but also in other languages commonly used in Greece, such as Albanian (racizmi) and Arabic (eunsuria). In this paper, I examine how these two vocabularies—of racism and intersectionality—are operative in movement discourses, but also how they shape, and are shaped by activists’ perceptions, analyses, and theories of oppression. (shrink)

Vision and the gaze are key issues in the analysis of racism, sexism and ethnocentrism. In recent radical theory, generally, and French theory in particular, vision has been seen as a means of control. But this view is often unnuanced. It bypasses questions such as: Why is it that contemporary theories have been so critical of vision, and generous towards listening (in psychoanalysis) and language (in philosophy)? This collection of original essays brings together historical studies and contemporary theoretical perspectives (...) on vision. The historical papers focus in turn on Ancient Greece, medieval theology, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the nineteenth century. These historical studies are themselves thoroughly informed by poststructuralist theory. They provide a rigorous background for several new, exciting articles on vision and its bearings for feminism, race, sexual orientation, film and art. This collection is the first of its kind in juxtaposing historical and contemporary. (shrink)

This study analyses how online participants of celebrity gossip position themselves in relation to their audience through forms of moral argumentation and thereby contribute to social hierarchies. In this study, forms of moral argumentation are seen as enthymemes, that is, claim-reason units based on moral norms as premises. The material consists of a total of 900 asynchronous online comments in English and 900 in Finnish. In addition to rhetorical argumentation analysis, the study investigates the dependency of moral argumentation on three (...) contextual variables: gendered violence as the topic of discussion, as the shared culture of participants and a media institution as the moderator of online discourse. Four forms of moral argumentation were found in the material: 1) theoretical, 2) practical, 3) categorical and 4) digital enthymeme. Theoretical, practical and categorical enthymemes are rhetorical in a traditional sense because they include the hierarchical idea of moral norms as the shared, more or less authoritarian, basis of a community. Digital enthymemes, conversely, are texts without clear borders or any notion of moral norms. Such arguments characterized especially user-generated, English-language discussions concerning female celebrities’ fights. This indicates that the digital enthymeme is particularly prevalent where there is a lack of obvious hierarchies in the context of argumentation. As this study argues, however, the seemingly non-hierarchical and individualistic participation through digital enthymemes is a mere illusion, for these enthymemes are based on crowd behaviour supportive of sexist and class-bound domination. (shrink)

Much recent work in feminist philosophy of language and epistemology has focused on how power constrains speech and testimony. This paper aims to highlight the flip side of silencing by looking at the productive power of sexist ideology in the context of the Italian gender-based violence crime trial. Building on José Medina’s performative account of epistemic injustice (2013, 2021), I argue that when sexist conceptual resources are used by the judge as an epistemic lens, they do ideological work by setting (...) unfair constraints on the communicative and epistemic agency of the complainant in the obtaining of her testimony. Moreover, I argue that the very same hermeneutical insensitivities and distorting concepts that shape patterns of silence can give rise to forms of agential testimonial injustice (Lackey 2023) in which the only witness statements believed by the Court are those elicited through oppressive questions that obscure, deny, or minimize the reported violence, constituting a form of extracted speech (McKinney 2016). In practical terms, this paper intends to offer a possible theoretical tool to detect and counteract those unjust discursive practices that prevent an unbiased constitution of testimonial evidence. (shrink)

SummaryA more careful delineation of the ideal‐typical marriage allows the flaws in Berger and Kellner's article to be examined. These flaws stem both from a rather too easy assumption that marriages are egalitarian relationships and that equality means sameness of experience between husbands and wives, and from the use of sexist language combined with a reliance on examples drawn primarily from the husband's experience. Their claim that marriage is a crucial nomic process where individuals gain a sense of identity and (...) of stability must be modified to say that individuals go into marriage with a clear commitment to being husbands and wives and without any realization, or perhaps even the ability to realise, that the current organisation of the nuclear family can be harmful for wives. The nomic processes which take place in marriage are central to a sense of identity and stability as Berger and Kellner claim, but they are only one of many other nomic processes, one of which is accessed only through the world of paid work. For the wife in the ideal‐typical family, to give up her access to nomic processes which have contributed to her sense of who she is and to envelop herself only in the marital conversation is to reduce her power, her sense of herself and her capacity to negotiate successfully within the marital conversation. Couples who may believe in and practise equality may find themselves caught up in a structure which makes equality non‐practicable without really realising how or why this has happened.I believe the foregoing analysis has demonstrated the way in which flawed theory is a probable outcome of reasoning based only on male experience. It is possible through attention to the experience in which the theory is grounded to extend that ground to include women and thus rewrite the theory such that it makes sense for women as well as for men.The implications for equality of educational opportunityThrough a reworking of the theories that make up the knowledge base of tertiary education, female students will not only gain access to theories which do not limit and distort their experience, but they will also gain access to a different form of negotiation within the educational process itself. Currently they learn through a multitude of explicit and implicit statements and through the process of education itself, that their role is to be passive and invisible.To engage them in the process of rewriting the theories themselves is to empower them, to give them a say in what constitutes the knowledge that they have currently been excluded from. In so doing they are learning to challenge one of the most basic foundations of the existing social order because they are asserting their power to question, to interpret men's words, to assert the validity of their experience outside masculine constructions of that experience, to theorize alongside men, not from a position of subordination , but from a position of equality. (shrink)

In this article, I explore some harms that emerge from the call for charity in academic philosophy. A charitability gap, I suggest, exists both between who we tend to read charitably and who we tend to expect charitability from. This gap shores up the disciplinary status quo and (re)produces epistemic oppression, which helps preserve philosophy's status as a discipline that is, to use Charles Mills's language, conceptually and demographically dominated by whiteness and maleness (Mills 1998, 2). I am particularly interested (...) in calls for charity made in response to critiques of racist or sexist authors/texts. I suggest that in these cases, interpretive charity perpetuates epistemic violence by creating conditions for testimonial smothering (Dotson 2011); that it functions as an orientation device (Ahmed 2006) designed to bring “unruly” philosophers back in line with disciplinary practices and traditions; and that it requires resistant philosophers to remain in oppressive worlds (Lugones 2003a; Pohlhaus 2011). Although charitability is risky—and charity is disproportionately demanded from already marginalized philosophers—I am hesitant to abandon charity entirely. The outright rejection of charitable orientations toward texts or others commits philosophers to a purity politics that, following Alexis Shotwell, I suggest we resist (Shotwell 2016). (shrink)

Early in the resurgence of feminist philosophy that accompanied the “second wave” of the feminist movement in the 1960s and 1970s, language was recognized as a key issue. Because personal relations, politics, economics, religions, and academic disciplines are defined and carried on in language, practical reform or transformation in these areas is often blocked by insistence on logics, rules of grammar, systems of meaning, and uses of words that carry sexist implications. The question immediately presented itself as to whether these (...) barriers are changeable uses of words and reformable conventions of grammar, or constitutive of rationality and so not removable without risking unintelligibility. Is language a variable and flexible tool that can be used to describe independently existing differences between men and women, or are those differences projected in language? Even more important for feminists is the question of the relation between language and thought. Is language constitutive of thought so that any intelligible communicable thought is framed within established perimeters of possibly sexist meaning? Or can feminist beliefs and aspirations achieve independence from established meanings and lay groundwork for radical changes in human relations? Even more important: is the self constituted in language, or can freely thinking feminist selves hope to create more adequate means of communication and more truthful ways of naming reality? (shrink)

A case has been made by various authors that the normative and processual notion of personhood found in African philosophy is discriminatory: it has been labelled as sexist, ableist and anti-queer. Within the anti-queer critique, one area that has not been specifically addressed in the literature is whether this notion of personhood is biased against people who identify as non-binary with respect to gender. This includes people who are gender fluid and gender neutral, among others. In this article, we argue (...) that the binary conception of gender is deeply connected to a colonial agenda, and does not accurately fit extra-colonial gender conceptions. Through an analysis of extra-colonial language and logic, read together with the flexibility inherent in the processual notion of personhood (on our reading), we argue that binaries do not sit comfortably with extra-colonial African thinking, and as such, processual and normative personhood can be understood in a way that embraces non-binary individuals. Further, the standards for achieving personhood are set by and achieved within the community, so a community which recognises and celebrates non-binary individuals can set up a framework for them to achieve personhood. Accordingly, normative personhood in African thought is found not to exclude those of non-binary gender. This reading saves the normative approach from some of the critiques levelled against it, as well as: i) enhancing consistency in an African world view; ii) strengthening the decolonial agenda; and iii) showing normative personhood to be fairer and more inclusive. (shrink)

Psychology research on men studies, attractiveness, and partner preferences has evolved from the influence of sociobiological perspectives to the role of interactions in shaping election toward sexual–affective relationships and desire toward different kinds of masculinities. However, there is a scientific gap in how language and communicative acts among women influence the kind of partner they feel attracted to and in the reproduction of relationship double standards, like the myth of the “warrior’s rest” where female attractiveness to “bad boys” is encouraged (...) or supported. Some women imitate “the warrior” behavior of men by choosing dominant traditional masculinities (DTM) to have “fun” with and oppressed traditional masculinities (OTM) for “rest” after the “fun” with DTM—choosing an OTM for a stable relationship, but perhaps without passion, while also feeling attraction toward DTM, a response which perpetuates the chauvinist double standard that the feminist movement has condemned when men behave in this sexist way. Through conducting a qualitative study with communicative daily life stories, this article explores, on the one hand, how language and social interaction among women can lead to the reproduction of the DTM role by women and, on the other hand, also how new alternative masculinities (NAM) offer an alternative by explicitly rejecting, through the language of desire, to be the rest for the female warrior, the second fiddle to any woman. This has the potential to become a highly attractive alternative to DTM. Findings provide new knowledge through the analysis of communicative acts and masculinities evidencing the importance of language uses in the reproduction of the double standards in gender relations and to understand how and why these practices are maintained and which kind of language uses can contribute to preventing them. Implications for research and interventions on preventive socialization of gender violence are discussed. (shrink)

This study examines the dynamics of cultural politics in reality television shows featuring North Korean resettlers in South Korea. As existing studies focus on the role of media representation reproducing a dominant ideology for the resettlers, this paper focuses on the specific media rituals of NKR2 programs, which can be seen as a product of the neoliberalist localization process of the global media industry. In doing so, this paper demonstrates how NKR2 programs interrupt the current dynamics of emotions in regard (...) to North Korean resettlers in South Korea. We argue that in shaping civic identity as an effect of the NKR2 show, cultural politics of citizenship in South Korea on North Korean resettlers serve the formation of relatively conservative and sexist civic identity. (shrink)

Modern Standard German does not have distinct forms for nominatives and accusatives in the feminine gender. This is not only unique within Germanic languages, but also quite remarkable from a typological and functional viewpoint, under the plausible assumption that feminine NPs do not differ in animacy from masculine NPs. I will discuss the loss of the N/A distinction for feminines in detail and speculate about possible reasons – among others, that the referents of feminines are not typically animate, that the (...) syncretism was modelled after a similar syncretism in the plural, and that a sexist bias of the speech community in which the syncretism originated influenced a core part of the grammar of their language. (shrink)

The paper contains pedagogical suggestions for addressing issues of racism and sexism in the classroom, in the context of an introductory philosophy survey. It draws on the ideas of Charles Mills, Laurence Thomas, Peggy McIntosh and others.