Although the idea that sexual violence is a “structural” problem is not new, the lack of specification as to what that entails blocks effective responses to it. This paper illustrates the concept of sexual violence as structural in the sense of containing a type of moral wrong called “structural wrong” and discusses its practical implications. First, I introduce a distinction between two types of moral wrongs—interactional wrongs and structural wrongs—and I argue that the moral problem of sexual violence includes both types, each of which calls for a different set of moral responses. Second, drawing on Iris Marion Young's social connection model of responsibility, I argue that recognizing the structural-wrong element of sexual violence does not reduce individual perpetrators’ responsibility for it. Instead, it implies that a broader group of agents are required to join collective actions to reform the social structure. I conclude by evaluating some preventive programs against sexual violence through the lens of structural wrongs and providing directions to advance them.

Trans and gender-nonconforming people sometimes say that certain gender norms are authentic for them. For example, a trans man might say that abiding by norms of masculinity tracks who he really is. Authenticity is sometimes taken to appeal to an essential, pre-social “inner self.” It is also sometimes understood as a moral notion. Authenticity claims about gender norms therefore appear inimical to two key commitments in feminist philosophy: that all gender norms are socially constructed, and that many domains of gender norms are both morally and prudentially bad. I argue that that this apparent tension is illusory. Concordant with existing trans narratives of authenticity, I articulate an existentialist view that understands authenticity as a socially embedded, constructive project undertaken in a non-ideal social world, rather than a reflective uncovering of a pre-given, essential self. I then show that authenticity and morality can come apart; what is authentic for someone need not be either morally good or good for them. I conclude that the authenticity of gender norms does not cut against the feminist commitments that I identify. This conclusion enables a theoretical space that is both respectful of trans experience and critical of dominant gender norms, an important liberatory goal.

Mary Astell's female retreat is a political project, dedicated to the full self-realization of students in a world that diminishes them and thwarts the development of their potential. Newly analyzing the pedagogical tools and distinctive setting of her seminary, I reveal its most progressive promise. In this political reading of A Serious Proposal, Astell emerges as an early figure in the broad political tradition of female resistance to patriarchal domination. She enables a subordinated group of women to arrive at new and oppositional ways of understanding themselves, each other, and even the world, and to act for change. The methods and tactics she employs in her retreat bring to light some surprisingly democratic and feminist dimensions of Mary Astell.

Contemporary Arab feminist writers such as Margot Badran and Mona Eltahawy describe their personal discovery of Arab “pioneers.” This label positions “pioneers” as exceptional figures, which untethers their legacy from contemporary Arab feminists, and from one another. Drawing on the Warwick Research Collective's concept of “combined and uneven development,” this essay rethinks how we understand the first wave to account for the feminist histories in al-mashreq, and therefore reimagines the feminist wave model to account for waves of transmission, of emotion such as inspiration drawn from solidarity with other women. Through analysis of Anglophone scholarship and biographies, translated autobiographical writings of “pioneers,” and analysis of L'Egyptienne magazine, this article offers a new way of framing the work of “pioneer” feminists as part of a wide network of collaborators, and a wave of feminist activism that is locally and globally imbricated. This paper examines women's journals and salons which contribute to a period of “invisible feminism” from 1860 to the early 1920s. The endeavors of three “pioneer” figures, Huda Sha'rawi (Egypt, 1879–1947), Anbara Salam Khalidi (Lebanon, 1897–1986), and May Ziadeh (Palestine/Lebanon, 1886–1941) are then discussed through the lens of their influential friendships with other women.

There have now been a few attempts in trans theory to give an account of trans epistemology (see Radi 2019; Meadow 2016; and Dickson 2021). I will suggest that despite an admirable goal—that of giving an epistemology that provides a methodologically radical and distinctively trans break from other contemporary epistemological theory—thus far no account has been successful. Instead, I suggest that, in the absence of a more satisfactory radical account of trans epistemology, we can think of trans epistemology as a methodologically moderate (though politically radical) extension of mainstream epistemology.

Some ecofeminist scholars have argued that being a feminist entails being a contextual vegan. Donna Haraway has opposed this position and received extensive critique. Yet no one, to my knowledge, has systematically studied how Haraway's theory can enrich ecofeminist vegan literature. To this end, I first establish the method of analysis, and/or framework, I use to read Haraway's work, what I call, interconstitutionality. Next, I delineate the limitations of Haraway's thinking insofar as it assumes a position of human dominion over animals. I then explore some aspects of Haraway's theory that can enrich ecofeminist vegan scholarship and provide insights to go beyond the limits of Haraway's corpus regarding: (1) the entanglements and embodied vulnerabilities that constitute human and non-human animals; (2) the agency of animals and the importance of curiosity and respect in leading just lives with other than human animals; (3) the ethical relevance of otherness, difference, and vulnerability at multiple scales: subject, community/herd, species, and cross-species (e.g., there are shared vulnerabilities between beings who are pregnant regardless of the species they belong to); and (4) the unavoidable violence that human existence entails. The text closes by affirming an ecofeminist non-anthropocentric vegan ontology and ethico-politics that aspires to overcome human dominion over animals.

Research into war rape has shown that rape is not incidental to the general violence of war but is instead an integral part of war strategies. Such research makes it clear that in the context of war, rape serves to injure women on an individual level, but has the more strategic effect of fracturing communal bonds. Similarly, the growing body of research investigating the reasons for, and consequences of, the rape of lesbian women, indicates that these rapes have far-reaching consequences for lesbian communities and serves to reinforce patriarchal heteronormativity. While there is much research around both war and lesbo-phobic rape, the aim of this paper is to bring this research together in order examine lesbo-phobic rape through the lens of war rape theory. This paper aims to show how both “forms” of rape appear to hinge on the meanings assigned to women during peacetime and how both lead to the destruction of individual victims and their communities, while bolstering the subjectivities of the perpetrators and increasing the bonds of those complicit in such violence. The use of the theoretical understandings of war rape thus enriches the understandings of lesbo-phobic rape and shows that there are many continuities between the two.

In pornography, standard modeling contracts often require a performer to surrender rights over their public image and sexual media in perpetuity and across media. Under these contracts, performers are unable to determine who accesses, for what duration, and under what conditions, their sexual media. As a result, pornography has been described by some performers as a “life sentence”—a phrase which, if true, violates some strong intuitions we share about the importance of autonomy in sexual activity. Using the framework of “affirmative consent,” I argue that these contracts violate performers’ rights to sexual autonomy, and ought therefore to be considered objectionable. Overall, I argue that the legal regimes we create have a strong impact on people's lives, and more important than legislating individual outcomes, the type of infrastructure we build around people's decisions has the potential to radically empower—or disempower—those engaged in sex work.

Martha Nussbaum in her The New Religious Intolerance (2012) commits several old forms of epistemic vice including exclusion, orientalism, and colonial discourse. Unsurprisingly, as a result, her text contributes to the production of ignorance about Muslims and Muslim women despite her intention of combating Islamophobia. In this article, I specifically critique Nussbaum's anti-burqa-ban arguments and her pro-airport-profiling stance. To do so, I draw on the work of Audre Lorde and other feminist scholars and scholars of color to express the harms of excluding Muslim voices and misusing Western/white voices in their place. Recalling Edward Said, Marilyn Frye, and María Lugones, I argue that Nussbaum's text is a classic example of orientalism and various forms of colonial discourse.

Anti-exceptionalists about formal logic think that logic is continuous with the sciences. Many philosophers of science think that there is feminist science. Putting these together: can anti-exceptionalism make space for feminist logic? The answer depends on the details of the ways logic is like science and the ways science can be feminist. This paper wades into these details, examines five different approaches, and ultimately argues that anti-exceptionalism makes space for feminist logic in several different ways.

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) inadvertently 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.

Feminist epistemology aims to propose epistemic reasons for increasing the representation of women or socially subordinated people in science. This is typically done—albeit often only implicitly—by positing a causal mechanism through which the representation of sociodemographic minorities exerts a positive effect on scientific advancement. Two types of causal theories can be identified. The “epistemic diversity thesis” presents a causal path from sociodemographic diversity to scientific progress mediated by epistemic diversity. The “thesis of epistemic advantage” proposes a causal path from social subjugation to capacity for inquiry. The latter theory is defined with substantial ambiguity in the existing literature, and I present an explicit causal reformulation that disambiguates it. The epistemic diversity thesis focuses on the effect of group composition on collective epistemic performance and is largely silent about what kind of characteristics lead to individual epistemic excellence. On the other hand, the thesis of epistemic advantage seeks to identify sociodemographic background conditions that make certain epistemic agents strictly better knowers or inquirers than others and pays little attention to the synergistic effects of diverse group composition. Such a difference in the causal structure reflects the diverging political characteristics of the two theories.

A central function of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in the United States has been to center and express the lived experiences of Black people within the social and political framework of white supremacy. Regarding reproductive justice, BLM, as well as organizations like the Black Mamas Matter Alliance and Sistersong, have drawn political attention to the oppressive parameters existing for pregnant people “birthing while Black.” Attention to disparities in health and birth outcomes for Black persons has necessary positive effects, such as the ability to produce data on the deleterious effects of anti-Blackness. However, discourses surrounding Black birthing persons can function to obfuscate the collective action undertaken by Black women and non-Black women of color. In this paper, I argue the hyper-focus on the problems Black pregnant/birthing persons face has at least four issues: (1) it encourages an ontological collapse wherein Black birthers are positioned as problems, rather than human beings facing problems; (2) obscures the collective action and care Black women undertake to support one another; (3) results in state solutions that rely on underpaid and volunteer labor of Black and non-Black women of color; and (4) focuses myopically on the time period of pregnancy and birthing for Black persons.

In this paper I argue that the pervasive reality of unjust heterosex necessitates greater attention to the concept of “sexual fluency” (Cahill 2014). This paper elaborates on what it means to be a sexually fluent and disfluent subject, and its broader ethical and political significance. As part of this discussion, I explore the relationship between sexual (dis)fluency and embedded imaginaries, and critically reflect on the promise and limitations of particular interventions to disrupt patterns of sexual disfluency among sexual actors.

An apparent antagonism exists between fundamentality-focused mainstream metaphysics such as naturalized metaphysics—a metaphysics inspired and constrained by the findings of our best science—and feminist metaphysics whose subject matter is typically non-fundamental social reality. Taking Karen Barad's agential realism as a case study, this paper argues that these may not be in conflict after all. Agential realism is a metaphysical framework founded on quantum mechanics which shares the characteristic features of naturalized metaphysics. But Barad finds warrant to extend the scope of agential realism all the way to theorizing about our lifeworld as exemplified by her profound influence on feminist new materialism. Thus, this case study indicates that there does not have to be a division between fundamental and feminist metaphysics. The broad intended scope of agential realism is challenged by the success of Newtonian mechanics as an approximation of quantum mechanics, but certain aspects of agential realism promise to be robust under such approximation. If this is so, then Barad provides us with a metaphysics that is naturalized, fundamental, and feminist all at once.

The 1970s Wages Against Housework (WAH) movement has much to offer as we form a “new normal” for life and work within the Covid-19 pandemic. WAH feminist philosophers Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Selma James, and Silvia Federici, as well as WAH critic Angela Davis outline the ways in which the housewife functions as a laborer within capitalist accumulation, as her duties to care for the home and rear the children generate the possibility of the husband to labor outside the home. This role of the housewife in Dalla Costa and James’ “social factory” parallels the work of teachers and the chorus of demands to “return to the classroom” that were placed on teachers in the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. Highlighting these parallels, the argument of this essay is simple: Covid-19 has visibilized the underpaid and unpaid labor of teachers. We ought to engage this moment of visibilization to demand transformative change to the teaching profession. Due to the parallels between WAH's “housewife” and teachers, we have much to learn from WAH theorizing as we demand those transformative changes, especially now as we solidify our “new normal” more than two years since the Covid-19 pandemic began.

A handful of scholars have connected objectification (treating people like objects) to personification (treating objects like people). The recurring idea is that personification may entail objectification and therefore share in the latter's ethical difficulties. This idea is defended by various feminist philosophers. They focus on how the connection manifests in the male, heterosexual consumption of pornography, grounding a constitutive ethical criticism of this pornography. In this paper, I schematize the only two arguments for this connection, showing why each fails. I revise one of the arguments to overcome my objection before showing, most significantly, that any argument with the same form must fail. I conclude by suggesting that thinking about the ethics of the imagination offers a promising alternative approach that preserves the spirit of these failed arguments.

During the first decades of the twentieth century when the Indian freedom struggle movement gained momentum, M. K. Gandhi often evoked Mirabai—the sixteenth-century bhakti poet-saint—in his public speeches and voluminous letters. This article demonstrates the degree to which Gandhi's maneuver fundamentally altered Mirabai's image as a national and cultural symbol, and how it prompted the mobilization of women in the larger nationalist movement. Through the process of appropriation, Mirabai's image evolved in the Indian cultural realm from a woman charged with promiscuity into an ideal “chaste” woman. Gandhi's intervention further initiated a moral renaissance parallel to the nationalist current where women transgressed the thresholds of traditional domesticity and became active agents of non-violent resistance—Hindu/spiritual in essence—inspired by Mirabai's suffering and compositions. Gandhi's Mira emerged as a literary-cultural hybrid that circulated in public spheres, as Mirabai became a public icon and a vehicle for women's emancipation alongside national liberation.

This article engages the views of PRC Confucian scholars who responded to the United States Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's citing of Confucius in his majority opinion on same-sex marriage in 2015. It questions their separation of tolerance for homosexuality from legalization of same-sex marriage and argue that tolerance is not enough. The arguments in the mainland Confucian discourse about same-sex marriage highlights the historical and persistent entanglement of Confucianism with patriarchy. Instead of reviving traditional patriarchal society, further entrenching and increasing gender inequality, contemporary Confucianism could shape its own unique modern society that aspires to (and hopefully one day achieving) gender equality together with sexual inclusivity by deconstructing the patriarchal Confucian family and reconstructing a different Confucian family ideal. Accepting same-sex marriage would lend weight to the latter, and there are Confucian reasons for legalizing same-sex marriage and recognizing its ethical value.

According to speech-act theory, we do things with words every time we speak. The most striking thing one can do with words is to exercise authority over others, such as when a judge issues a guilty verdict in a criminal trial. Some speakers hold this kind of authority without good reason; this kind of speech constitutes an unjust imposition of authority, and thus arguably harms in a direct, non-metaphorical sense; it would seem, therefore, that it should not be protected by freedom of speech. The problem in these cases, however, does not lie in the words that harmful speakers utter, but in the things they have the power to do with them. It is this power, it seems, that must be dismantled: in speech-act terms, we must tackle felicity conditions, not locutions. This paper defends this insight. By providing an account of the (alleged) authority of pornographers as both epistemic and informal, I claim that the presumption against censoring porn is not lifted even if the speech-act argument succeeds in showing that pornography can be constitutive of harm. This does not mean that such harms should not be countered, but they should be countered as the specific kinds of harms that they are.