Markets are often seen as beneficial epistemic institutions because they can transmit information via the price mechanism. But real-life markets often create various epistemic pitfalls for participants. In market societies, individuals, qua consumers, must make numerous difficult decisions for which they need to find relevant information. Depending on their positions in society—which tends to disadvantage women, non-white individuals, and working-class individuals—their opportunities for doing so can be very different. Mechanisms such as time poverty, lack of relevant skills, lack of networks, inability to pay for advice, a scarcity mindset, or lack of knowledge about how to fight back when one's rights have been violated, mean that structurally disadvantaged individuals often end up making “bad” decisions that threaten their welfare and their ability to lead an autonomous life. Moreover, some market actors target individuals in difficult situations and make profit by exploiting their vulnerabilities. I discuss these epistemic mechanisms, which are intertwined with various other forms of harm, and also mechanisms that can help address the problem by public policy: strategies for empowering individuals, and ways of regulating or replacing markets in order to prevent the exploitation of epistemically vulnerable groups.

The relation between time and gender has been extensively discussed in feminist theory, from Simone de Beauvoir to recent studies of queer temporality and crip time. In this article, I explore gender as “lived time” in relation to a pressing feminist issue: social recognition of the chronic illness endometriosis (endo). Based on my interviews with individuals diagnosed with endo, I argue that lived time can be studied by approaching becoming as a dynamic process or flow of recognition, creating certain temporal patterns in the lifeworld. I propose the concept of “endo time” as a phenomenological conception of the lived time of endo. I identify three temporal patterns that characterize endo time: waiting time (I), cyclical or chronic time (II), and sedimented time (III). The analysis contributes to feminist philosophy by detailing how gender appears as a specific orchestration of time. Because of its connection to feminized pain and menstrual flow on the one hand and social recognition on the other, endo presents an illuminating case for exploring the relation between gender, recognition, and lived time.

The stakes of feminist activism, and the fault lines within feminism, have a newfound significance in this cultural moment. In response to the fall of Roe, the ascendancy of incendiary far-right politics, and the mainstreaming of white-supremacist ideologies, grassroots feminist activism and its impacts have never mattered more. When reading Rachel Seidman's Speaking of Feminism and Arielle Rotramel's Pushing Back, both books that feature interviews and ethnographic work on feminists and feminist groups prior to the 2016 election (Seidman interviewed participants from 2014 to 2016, and Rotramel worked on this material primarily from 2007 to 2011), the gap between the pre- and post-2016 realities seems ever more stark. These books highlight feminisms just prior to the series of aggressive assaults that feminism (and all forms of social justice) would face following the 2016 US presidential election. Both serve as a kind of warning—feminists of all ages understood the hazards of fusing misogyny and white supremacy—and as capturing the histories of feminist activism before the cascade of traumas that would ensue from 2016 to the present day. In this way, feminist ethnographic work and interviews with activists operate as time capsules with unique relevance to the genealogical structure of feminist history and activism. By foregrounding women-of-color-led activisms in particular, historians can trace in this period the movement from theorizing about intersectionality to enacting feminist activisms that draw from experiences of marginalization. The significance of feminist work that built on, and contributed to, theorizing about intersecting identities and interlocking oppressions is brought boldly to life in these two texts.

This article describes some of the pitfalls of empathy as a tool for supporting intergroup solidarity and examines how best to navigate these pitfalls. In cases where racial injustice is structural and complex, those who are not directly targeted by an injustice may fail to appropriately recognize and respond to injustice, undermining the political solidarity required to make social change. This deficiency in moral knowledge and motivation raises the question of whether relying on empathy in cases of racial injustice could actually be undermining anti-racism. The article describes two ways in which empathy tends to fail as a moral-epistemic tool for recognizing and responding to racial injustice: centering the privileged perspective and generalized projecting. Nevertheless, we should avoid drawing the conclusion that empathy has no place in coalitional politics. This article draws a distinction between transitory empathy, which is experienced as a passing moment in time, and accretionary empathy, which is developed over an extended period of time. The practices associated with transitory empathy are more susceptible to failure, while the practices associated with accretionary empathy can make vital contributions to intergroup solidarity.