Overview

What is gender? What should gender look like in the 21st century? This book brings together philosophy with insights from feminist and transgender theory to argue for gender pluralism: that there should be more than two genders, and that each gender term should have multiple meanings. Developing an explicitly political version of conceptual engineering, What Gender Should Be contains novel and powerful arguments both against existing theories of gender such as family resemblance accounts and against gender abolition, underlining how each is insufficient for thinking about and doing justice to contemporary transgender identities and politics. Instead, Matthew J. Cull argues that we should be pluralists about gender, putting forward and advocating for a position that is more apt for contemporary transgender and feminist activism. The 21st century requires a new way of thinking about gender. What Gender Should Be sets out to provide it.

Full Product Details

Author:   Matthew J. Cull ,  Ciara Cremin (University of Auckland New Zealand) ,  Abraham Weil
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint:   Bloomsbury Academic
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 2.50cm , Length: 23.40cm
Weight:   0.454kg
ISBN:  

9781350328976

ISBN 10:   1350328979
Pages:   240
Publication Date:   13 June 2024
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Introduction Chapter One - How to Engineer a Gender 1.1 Neurathian Conceptual Engineering 1.2 Constraints, Desiderata 1.3 Amelioration for Activists 1.4 The Political Efficacy Question Chapter Two - Family Resemblances: Failures of Inclusivity 2.1 Family Resemblances 2.2 Cluster Accounts 2.3 Overlapping Accounts 2.2 The Double Counting and Discrete/Continuous Problems 2.3 A Non-Binary Intervention Chapter Three - Anti-Structuralism: Performativity and Prolepsis 3.1 Initiation into Sex and Gender: Exercitives and Proleptic Mechanisms 3.2 Butler’s Positive Program 3.3 Prosser’s Critiques 3.4 The Phenomenology of Gender 3.5 Anti-Structuralism Considered Chapter Four - Deflating Gender, Deflating Self-Identification 4.1 Semantic Deflationism about Gender 4.2 Self-Identification: A Kinder Deflation 4.3 Worries for Self-Identification Deflationisms 4.4 The Triviality Dispute 4.5 A Defensible Metaphysics of Self-Identification 4.6 Semantic Quietism Chapter Five - Error and Abolition 5.1 Error Theory 5.2 Gender Abolitionism 5.3 Gender Nihilism 5.4 Transgender Identities and Abolitionism 5.5 Ideal Theory, Practical Realities 5.6 Colonialism and Abolition Chapter Six - An Alternative: Ameliorative Semantic Pluralism 6.1 Saul and Bettcher 6.2 The Ameliorative Semantic Pluralist Project 6.3 Objections to Ameliorative Semantic Pluralism 6.4 Saul’s Revenge 6.5 Down Enby: The Logic of Gender 6.6 Solidarity: Spelman to the Present Day Chapter Seven - Between Lorde and Neurath: Hermeneutic Innovation 7.1 Back to Neurath 7.2 Sweaty Concepts 7.3 A Meaning for ‘Agender’ 7.4 The Agender Agenda and Some Recent Accounts of Gender 7.5 Dembroff’s Critical Gender Kind 7.6 Jenkins’ Gender Dualism Conclusion

Reviews

This is an important book. It makes a compelling case for pluralism about gender, situating this in a rich historical and philosophical context, while never losing sight of real-world trans lives, oppression, and liberation. * Jennifer Saul, Waterloo Chair in Social and Political Philosophy of Language, University of Waterloo, Canada *

Author Information

Matthew J. Cull is a philosopher at the University of Edinburgh, UK. Their work covers a variety of areas in social and political philosophy, focusing in particular on feminist and transgender philosophy. Matthew's writing has previously appeared in venues such as Philosophical Papers, Feminist Philosophy Quarterly, and The Journal of Social Ontology.

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