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.
Acknowledgements Introduction Part I: From Conceptual Change to Liberation 1. Conceptual Engineering 2. Between Semantics and Metaphysics 3. What Conceptual Change Can Do for Liberation Part II: Pluralism 4. The Double-Counting and Discrete/Continuous Problems 5. Gender Pluralism 6. Gender Identity, Deflated Part III: Abolitionism, Past and Present 7. The Mare Magnum, Or Transcendental Androgyny 8. Engineers and Wrecking Crews: Contemporary Gender Abolitionism Conclusion Notes References Index
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.
Reviews for What Gender Should Be
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 *
