Abstract:
In this talk I will describe and defend a metaphysically realist position of gender that takes gender to be real. I will argue for this as a result of applying a (W.V.O.) Quinean indispensability argument as such: for as long as there is gender-based oppression such as misogyny or transphobia then we have an indispensable need for gender-based concepts such as woman and man in order to understand and eliminate such oppression, and therefore if gender is indispensable, albeit contingently, then we should take gender to be real. I argue that debates about what gender is are partially about what the world is like, given that reality includes social reality, where gendered experiences are an irreducible aspect of that social reality. In the spirit of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's strategic essentialism applied at the meta-level, gender is essential for strategic political purposes, even if genders are not essentially defined. I call this position (2nd order) gender essentialism without (1st order) gender essencealism.
Bio:
Dr Suki Finn is a Lecturer in Philosophy at Royal Holloway University of London and a visiting fellow with the CPS at the University of Oslo. Previously, she was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Southampton and has held other visiting fellowships at the University of Vienna (2023), Australian National University (2019), New York University (2018), and City University of New York Graduate Center (2014). Her areas of research span the philosophy of logic, metaphysics, philosophy of science, feminism, and epistemology. She has published a number of articles on these topics in Synthese, Bioethics, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, European Journal of the Philosophy of Science, Australasian Journal of Logic, Philosophia, and more. She is the author of What’s in a Doughnut Hole? And other philosophical food for thought (Icon, 2024) and editor of Women of Ideas (Oxford University Press, 2021). Dr Finn. is a University and College Union representative, and is on the Executive Committee for the Society for Women in Philosophy UK and the Council for the Royal Institute of Philosophy. For more information on her research, see her website here.