Natalie Stoljar

Relational Autonomy: Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy, Agency, and the Social Self

Balbus, Isaac D. 1982. Marxism and domination: A neo-Hegelian, feminist, psychoanalytic theory of sexual, political, and technological liberation. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Galston, William. 1991. Liberal purposes: Goods, virtues, and diversity in the liberal state. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Weber, Max. 1958. Science as a vocation. In From Max Weber: Essays in sociology, ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. New York: Oxford University Press.Introduction: Autonomy refigured PART 1: AUTONOMY AND THE SOCIAL 1. Autonomy, social disruption and women 2. Autonomy and the social self 3. Feeling crazy: self worth and the social character of responsibility 4. Autonomy and the feminist intuition 5. Individuals, responsibility and the philosophical imagination 6. Imagining oneself otherwise 7. Intersectional identity and the authentic self?: Opposites attract 8. The perversion of autonomy and the subjection of women: discourses of social advocacy at centurys end PART II: RELATIONAL AUTONOMY IN CONTEXT 9. Choice and control in feminist bioethics 10. Autonomy and interdependence: quandaries in genetic decision-making 11. Relational autonomy, self-trust, and health care for patients who are oppressed 12. Relational autonomy and freedom of expression

Different Women. Gender and the Realism-Nominalism Debate

Individuals who are women are members of a group, “women,” yet they are also very different from each other. Is there one womanness or many? Realists say that there is one womanness whereas nominalists say that there are many. Although nominalism is the more popular position among feminists, and realism is usually dismissed, Mari Mikkola has recently proposed that gender realism should be treated as a serious metaphysical option. In this chapter I evaluate the arguments for nominalism. I identify five separate arguments and conclude that, although not all of the arguments are successful on their own, the combined effect of the ones that are successful is to make a strong case for gender nominalism. Feminists are right therefore to reject realism and adopt nominalism. At the end of the chapter, I briefly address the question “Why does this debate matter?” If the debate between gender realists and gender nominalists is no more than metaphysical or theoretical bookkeeping, why should feminists care about adopting one side or the other?

Subordination, Silencing, and Two Ideas of Illocution

1. It is wonderful that Rae Langton’s existing essays on pornography, on objectification, and on the links between them should be assembled and supplemented with three new ones. For some of us it is especially gratifying to have a book to recommend which is at once a compelling work of feminism and an excellent work of analytic philosophy. But one need not be a feminist or an analytic philosopher to admire Langton’s distinctive, engaging style, and to wonder at the care and rigour of her arguments. One does have to be a philosopher, perhaps, fully to appreciate the imaginative uses to which Langton puts ideas from historical figures, and from recent work in political philosophy, ethics, epistemology, philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. Langton gets difficult things across with ease, and thanks to her extraordinary clear-headedness, her writing is a special pleasure to read. I’m not going to attempt to review the overall project of Sexual Solipsism. I want to take this opportunity to say something about one aspect of Langton’s treatment of the subject of pornography. As I see it, two normative principles inform the treatment. There is a political principle: that a right to equality is fundamental, being the wellspring for rights to liberty. And there is an ethical one: that there is something wrong about treating a person as a thing. So unexceptionable does each of the principles seem to many (2011) 2(2) Jurisprudence 379–385