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UID:248@ub.edu
DTSTART:20170222T130000Z
DTEND:20170222T150000Z
DTSTAMP:20250915T094556Z
URL:https://www.ub.edu/grc_logos/activities/gender-fictionalism/
SUMMARY:Gender Fictionalism
DESCRIPTION:The nature of gender is at the heart of ongoing public conversa
 tions occasioned by the increased visibility of transgender people&mdash\;
 for example\, when someone born with a Y-chromosome and a penis identifies
  as a woman\, what exactly is she identifying as?&nbsp\; A natural answer 
 is that gender is a primarily psychological type: for example\, identifyin
 g as &ldquo\;feminine&rdquo\; or &ldquo\;masculine&rdquo\;\, where these n
 otions are elaborated in terms of how one thinks and acts. This type of th
 eory faces what Sally Haslanger (2000) calls the commonality problem: it d
 oesn&rsquo\;t seem that there&rsquo\;s anything that all people we would p
 re-theoretically identify as women have in common in virtue of which they 
 count as women.&nbsp\; In response to this problem\, we might shift to a c
 onstrual of gender on which it is primarily a social type\, e.g.\, &ldquo\
 ;S is a woman iff (df) S is systematically subordinated along some dimensi
 on (economic\, political\, legal\, social\, etc.)\, and S is &lsquo\;marke
 d&rsquo\; as a target for this treatment by observed or imagined bodily fe
 atures presumed to be evidence of a female&rsquo\;s biological role in rep
 roduction&rdquo\; (Haslanger 2000\, p. 39). This move affords a solution t
 o the commonality problem&mdash\;probably the only plausible candidate for
  something that all women have in common is that they have been funneled i
 nto subordinate social roles on the basis of their presumed sex. However\,
  characterising a gender in terms of undesirable social roles is in tensio
 n with the fact that people positively value their genders.&nbsp\;We can a
 void this unwelcome result and the commonality problem if we adopt fiction
 alism about gender. Broadly speaking\, fictionalism is the view that some 
 portion of our ordinary talk is best characterised as not aiming at litera
 l truth\, but rather as constituting a fiction. Just as we can be fictiona
 lists about mathematical talk\, talk of possible worlds\, or talk of moral
 ity\, we could be fictionalists about talk of gender.&nbsp\; This enables 
 us to say that there is simply no fact of the matter as to what womanhood 
 (manhood\, etc.) really is. On this view\, being a woman can be a matter o
 f how you self-identify&mdash\;it&rsquo\;s just that the self-identificati
 on involves a category posited within the scope of a fiction\, and so ther
 e need be no general\, substantive answer to the question &ldquo\;exactly 
 what are you identifying as?&rdquo\;. In short\, gender fictionalism allow
 s us to positively value genders without embracing problematic general def
 initions.
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
LOCATION:Seminari de Filosofia UB
X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=C. Montalegre\, 6-8\, Barce
 lona\, 08001\, Spain;X-APPLE-RADIUS=100;X-TITLE=Seminari de Filosofia UB:g
 eo:0,0
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