Verbal disputes, social totality, and trans politics

Fuente: Wiley Open Access
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autore principale: Katie Zhou
Natura: Artículo Open Access
Pubblicazione: Wiley 2025
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1867007309380583424
author Katie Zhou
author_facet Katie Zhou
Katie Zhou
collection Wiley Open Access
contents Verbal disputes, social totality, and trans politics Katie Zhou Philosophy and Phenomenological Research AbstractA puzzling feature about the dispute over whether trans women are women is its apparent verbality: gender‐critical theorists assert a biological fact about trans women, and trans‐inclusionary theorists respond by asserting a social/psychological fact about trans women. But plausibly, both theorists’ assertions are compatible, and so there is no real disagreement. In this paper, I argue that the two theorists are not talking past each other. But I also argue that extant accounts of the dispute fail to adequately explain why the dispute is not merely verbal. Indeed, clarifying the dispute requires us to ask what it is for something to be a gender concept, as opposed to a merely biological or social/psychological concept. After developing a questions‐based account of concepts and conceptual roles, I suggest that a necessary feature of gender concepts is that we use them to construct unified and portable narratives about how we will stand in relation to one another as social individuals, regardless of the particular social context we are in. This allows us to understand the trans woman dispute as a dispute about whether we should prioritize biological or social/psychological facts when interpreting our relations to one another. 10.1111/phpr.70046 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
doi_str_mv 10.1111/phpr.70046
format Artículo Open Access
id wiley_oa_10_1111_phpr_70046
institution Wiley Open Access
license_str_mv http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
publishDate 2025
publisher Wiley
record_format wiley_oa
spellingShingle Verbal disputes, social totality, and trans politics
Katie Zhou
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
Verbal disputes, social totality, and trans politics Katie Zhou Philosophy and Phenomenological Research AbstractA puzzling feature about the dispute over whether trans women are women is its apparent verbality: gender‐critical theorists assert a biological fact about trans women, and trans‐inclusionary theorists respond by asserting a social/psychological fact about trans women. But plausibly, both theorists’ assertions are compatible, and so there is no real disagreement. In this paper, I argue that the two theorists are not talking past each other. But I also argue that extant accounts of the dispute fail to adequately explain why the dispute is not merely verbal. Indeed, clarifying the dispute requires us to ask what it is for something to be a gender concept, as opposed to a merely biological or social/psychological concept. After developing a questions‐based account of concepts and conceptual roles, I suggest that a necessary feature of gender concepts is that we use them to construct unified and portable narratives about how we will stand in relation to one another as social individuals, regardless of the particular social context we are in. This allows us to understand the trans woman dispute as a dispute about whether we should prioritize biological or social/psychological facts when interpreting our relations to one another. 10.1111/phpr.70046 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
title Verbal disputes, social totality, and trans politics
topic Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
url https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/phpr.70046