Against Abolition (original) (raw)

Authors

Matthew J Cull University of Sheffield https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2332-1299

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5206/fpq/2019.3.5898

Keywords:

Trans theory, Feminist Philosophy, Social Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Metaphysics of Gender, Social Ontology

Abstract

Analytic metaphysics of gender has taken an ameliorative turn towards ethical and political questions regarding what our concept of gender ought to be, and how gendered society should be structured. Abolitionism about gender, which claims that we ought to mandate gender out of existence, has therefore seen renewed interest. I consider three arguments for abolitionism from radically different perspectives: Haslanger’s simple argument, Escalante’s Gender Nihilism, and Okin’s argument from ideal theory. I argue that none of the above manage to establish the desirability of abolitionism and that we should be wary of the abolitionist position, as it imperils trans lives.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

How to Cite

Cull, Matthew J. 2019. “Against Abolition”. Feminist Philosophy Quarterly 5 (3). https://doi.org/10.5206/fpq/2019.3.5898.

Issue

Section

Articles, peer-reviewed

License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The authors of work published in FPQ under the Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 License retain copyright to their work without restrictions and publication rights without restrictions. However, we request that authors include some sort of acknowledgement that the work was previously published in FPQ if part or all of a paper published in FPQ is used elsewhere.