2018/01/01 by Robin Dembroff
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Affect (linguistics) #Communication #Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice #Context (archaeology) #Epistemology #Feminist Epistemology and Gender Studies #Focus (optics) #Gender studies #History #Law #Metaphysics #Oppression #Philosophy #Political Philosophy and Ethics #Political science #Politics #Psychology #Social psychology #Sociology
paper · doi:10.5840/philtopics201846212
crossref issued 2018/01/01 · crossref published 2018/01/01 · crossref published-online 2018/01/01 · openalex publication_date 2018/01/01 · crossref created 2020/09/09 · crossref deposited 2020/09/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05 · crossref indexed 2026/08/05
Gender classifications often are controversial. These controversies typically focus on whether gender classifications align with facts about gender kind membership: Could someone really be nonbinary? Is Chris Mosier (a trans man) really a man? I think this is a bad approach. Consider the possibility of ontological oppression, which arises when social kinds operating in a context unjustly constrain the behaviors, concepts, or affect of certain groups. Gender kinds operating in dominant contexts, I argue, oppress trans and nonbinary persons in this way: they marginalize trans men and women, and exclude nonbinary persons. As a result, facts about membership in dominant gender kinds should not settle gender classification practices.