Harassment is often understood to be, in its paradigm form, overtly aggressive or hostile. But harassment can also occur in a more deceptive format, and can be presented as soft, neutral, innocent, or even friendly and caring. There is something fundamentally deceptive and dishonest about this kind of harassment. The overt friendliness makes these particular forms of harassment harder to spot, and therefore potentially more likely to succeed. I focus on one such instance of friendly-presenting harassment: sealioning. I argue that, despite its ostensive friendliness, sealioning is a form of harassment that has a twofold goal: there is the political goal of forestalling action, and the epistemic goal of undermining the victim's authority. I draw on Jose Medina's understanding of culpable ignorance and the existentialist notion of bad faith to flesh out the distinction between ill-willed and good-willed sealioning, and argue that the latter, despite the good will, is also harassment. I conclude by addressing the different responsibilities of the sea lion, the victim, and the onlooker. Narrowing in on these deceptive forms of harassment, I aim to contribute to the hermeneutic justice of being able to spot and name harassment as it happens.

A handful of scholars have connected objectification (treating people like objects) to personification (treating objects like people). The recurring idea is that personification may entail objectification and therefore share in the latter's ethical difficulties. This idea is defended by various feminist philosophers. They focus on how the connection manifests in the male, heterosexual consumption of pornography, grounding a constitutive ethical criticism of this pornography. In this paper, I schematize the only two arguments for this connection, showing why each fails. I revise one of the arguments to overcome my objection before showing, most significantly, that any argument with the same form must fail. I conclude by suggesting that thinking about the ethics of the imagination offers a promising alternative approach that preserves the spirit of these failed arguments.

This article engages the views of PRC Confucian scholars who responded to the United States Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's citing of Confucius in his majority opinion on same-sex marriage in 2015. It questions their separation of tolerance for homosexuality from legalization of same-sex marriage and argue that tolerance is not enough. The arguments in the mainland Confucian discourse about same-sex marriage highlights the historical and persistent entanglement of Confucianism with patriarchy. Instead of reviving traditional patriarchal society, further entrenching and increasing gender inequality, contemporary Confucianism could shape its own unique modern society that aspires to (and hopefully one day achieving) gender equality together with sexual inclusivity by deconstructing the patriarchal Confucian family and reconstructing a different Confucian family ideal. Accepting same-sex marriage would lend weight to the latter, and there are Confucian reasons for legalizing same-sex marriage and recognizing its ethical value.

Markets are often seen as beneficial epistemic institutions because they can transmit information via the price mechanism. But real-life markets often create various epistemic pitfalls for participants. In market societies, individuals, qua consumers, must make numerous difficult decisions for which they need to find relevant information. Depending on their positions in society—which tends to disadvantage women, non-white individuals, and working-class individuals—their opportunities for doing so can be very different. Mechanisms such as time poverty, lack of relevant skills, lack of networks, inability to pay for advice, a scarcity mindset, or lack of knowledge about how to fight back when one's rights have been violated, mean that structurally disadvantaged individuals often end up making “bad” decisions that threaten their welfare and their ability to lead an autonomous life. Moreover, some market actors target individuals in difficult situations and make profit by exploiting their vulnerabilities. I discuss these epistemic mechanisms, which are intertwined with various other forms of harm, and also mechanisms that can help address the problem by public policy: strategies for empowering individuals, and ways of regulating or replacing markets in order to prevent the exploitation of epistemically vulnerable groups.

There have now been a few attempts in trans theory to give an account of trans epistemology (see Radi 2019; Meadow 2016; and Dickson 2021). I will suggest that despite an admirable goal—that of giving an epistemology that provides a methodologically radical and distinctively trans break from other contemporary epistemological theory—thus far no account has been successful. Instead, I suggest that, in the absence of a more satisfactory radical account of trans epistemology, we can think of trans epistemology as a methodologically moderate (though politically radical) extension of mainstream epistemology.

Feminist epistemology aims to propose epistemic reasons for increasing the representation of women or socially subordinated people in science. This is typically done—albeit often only implicitly—by positing a causal mechanism through which the representation of sociodemographic minorities exerts a positive effect on scientific advancement. Two types of causal theories can be identified. The “epistemic diversity thesis” presents a causal path from sociodemographic diversity to scientific progress mediated by epistemic diversity. The “thesis of epistemic advantage” proposes a causal path from social subjugation to capacity for inquiry. The latter theory is defined with substantial ambiguity in the existing literature, and I present an explicit causal reformulation that disambiguates it. The epistemic diversity thesis focuses on the effect of group composition on collective epistemic performance and is largely silent about what kind of characteristics lead to individual epistemic excellence. On the other hand, the thesis of epistemic advantage seeks to identify sociodemographic background conditions that make certain epistemic agents strictly better knowers or inquirers than others and pays little attention to the synergistic effects of diverse group composition. Such a difference in the causal structure reflects the diverging political characteristics of the two theories.

Research into war rape has shown that rape is not incidental to the general violence of war but is instead an integral part of war strategies. Such research makes it clear that in the context of war, rape serves to injure women on an individual level, but has the more strategic effect of fracturing communal bonds. Similarly, the growing body of research investigating the reasons for, and consequences of, the rape of lesbian women, indicates that these rapes have far-reaching consequences for lesbian communities and serves to reinforce patriarchal heteronormativity. While there is much research around both war and lesbo-phobic rape, the aim of this paper is to bring this research together in order examine lesbo-phobic rape through the lens of war rape theory. This paper aims to show how both “forms” of rape appear to hinge on the meanings assigned to women during peacetime and how both lead to the destruction of individual victims and their communities, while bolstering the subjectivities of the perpetrators and increasing the bonds of those complicit in such violence. The use of the theoretical understandings of war rape thus enriches the understandings of lesbo-phobic rape and shows that there are many continuities between the two.

This article describes some of the pitfalls of empathy as a tool for supporting intergroup solidarity and examines how best to navigate these pitfalls. In cases where racial injustice is structural and complex, those who are not directly targeted by an injustice may fail to appropriately recognize and respond to injustice, undermining the political solidarity required to make social change. This deficiency in moral knowledge and motivation raises the question of whether relying on empathy in cases of racial injustice could actually be undermining anti-racism. The article describes two ways in which empathy tends to fail as a moral-epistemic tool for recognizing and responding to racial injustice: centering the privileged perspective and generalized projecting. Nevertheless, we should avoid drawing the conclusion that empathy has no place in coalitional politics. This article draws a distinction between transitory empathy, which is experienced as a passing moment in time, and accretionary empathy, which is developed over an extended period of time. The practices associated with transitory empathy are more susceptible to failure, while the practices associated with accretionary empathy can make vital contributions to intergroup solidarity.

Trans and gender-nonconforming people sometimes say that certain gender norms are authentic for them. For example, a trans man might say that abiding by norms of masculinity tracks who he really is. Authenticity is sometimes taken to appeal to an essential, pre-social “inner self.” It is also sometimes understood as a moral notion. Authenticity claims about gender norms therefore appear inimical to two key commitments in feminist philosophy: that all gender norms are socially constructed, and that many domains of gender norms are both morally and prudentially bad. I argue that that this apparent tension is illusory. Concordant with existing trans narratives of authenticity, I articulate an existentialist view that understands authenticity as a socially embedded, constructive project undertaken in a non-ideal social world, rather than a reflective uncovering of a pre-given, essential self. I then show that authenticity and morality can come apart; what is authentic for someone need not be either morally good or good for them. I conclude that the authenticity of gender norms does not cut against the feminist commitments that I identify. This conclusion enables a theoretical space that is both respectful of trans experience and critical of dominant gender norms, an important liberatory goal.

In this paper I argue that the pervasive reality of unjust heterosex necessitates greater attention to the concept of “sexual fluency” (Cahill 2014). This paper elaborates on what it means to be a sexually fluent and disfluent subject, and its broader ethical and political significance. As part of this discussion, I explore the relationship between sexual (dis)fluency and embedded imaginaries, and critically reflect on the promise and limitations of particular interventions to disrupt patterns of sexual disfluency among sexual actors.

Contemporary Arab feminist writers such as Margot Badran and Mona Eltahawy describe their personal discovery of Arab “pioneers.” This label positions “pioneers” as exceptional figures, which untethers their legacy from contemporary Arab feminists, and from one another. Drawing on the Warwick Research Collective's concept of “combined and uneven development,” this essay rethinks how we understand the first wave to account for the feminist histories in al-mashreq, and therefore reimagines the feminist wave model to account for waves of transmission, of emotion such as inspiration drawn from solidarity with other women. Through analysis of Anglophone scholarship and biographies, translated autobiographical writings of “pioneers,” and analysis of L'Egyptienne magazine, this article offers a new way of framing the work of “pioneer” feminists as part of a wide network of collaborators, and a wave of feminist activism that is locally and globally imbricated. This paper examines women's journals and salons which contribute to a period of “invisible feminism” from 1860 to the early 1920s. The endeavors of three “pioneer” figures, Huda Sha'rawi (Egypt, 1879–1947), Anbara Salam Khalidi (Lebanon, 1897–1986), and May Ziadeh (Palestine/Lebanon, 1886–1941) are then discussed through the lens of their influential friendships with other women.

Anti-exceptionalists about formal logic think that logic is continuous with the sciences. Many philosophers of science think that there is feminist science. Putting these together: can anti-exceptionalism make space for feminist logic? The answer depends on the details of the ways logic is like science and the ways science can be feminist. This paper wades into these details, examines five different approaches, and ultimately argues that anti-exceptionalism makes space for feminist logic in several different ways.

Through a combined ecofeminist, and critical disability philosophical analysis of the commodification of female farmed animal reproduction, the paper conceptualizes ability as a socio-capitalist construct that can carry the potential for harm. Patriarchal farmed animal capitalism relies upon the idea of naturalized ability of farmed females to be hyper-reproductive/hyper-ovulatory/hyper-lactative. This paper frames the introduced condition of hyper-ovulation in “egg” hens, or the amplification of their ability to lay through selective breeding, as reproductive impairment, and an act of violent patriarchal commodification and capitalization of female reproduction. Impairment, then, functions not just as disability, but also as ability. Focusing on our rescued chickens, the paper argues that such intentionally bred hyper-fertility manifests for individual hens in its least harmful form as chronic illness with the likelihood of everyday pain and inflammation, anxiety, and metabolic hunger; and in its most harmful form as a life-threatening condition. It then examines the subversive ecofeminist politics of using contraception for chickens in a fraught attempt to restore a closer pace of avian ovulation cycles that existed prior to their selective breeding. In allowing infertility to be restored to hen bodies, chicken contraception highlights the disappearance of intentionally introduced reproductive impairment to materialize the patriarchal-capitalist ableist construct of hens who naturally ovulate daily. Ideas of normal and natural can also thus operate in the service of ability. Ultimately, the paper positions the infertile hen as central to a fuller feminist resistance to the governance and control of the female reproductive body.

Miranda Fricker's definition of hermeneutical injustice entails that hermeneutical injustice is always structural and never agential, but I argue that hermeneutical injustice has an agential dimension that is evident in cases of domestic violence. This dimension becomes especially apparent when examining the experiences of knowers who are multiply nondominant. Centering this intersectional approach, I focus on domestic violence perpetrators who intentionally isolate their victims, preventing them from accessing the necessary conceptual resources to understand their experience as one of domestic violence. Recognizing the agential dimension not only has implications for our understanding of the range of harms suffered by victims of domestic violence but also invites further reflection on cases of hermeneutical injustice where the injustice is the direct result of an agent's actions or is even intentionally inflicted.

Burgeoning narratives of neurodivergence increase representation in media, producing an unprecedented visibility and awareness of what it means to be neurodivergent in a neurotypical world. In this article I examine the ways in which a neurodivergent subject position can provide liberatory insights into oppressive patriarchal gender structures, while exploring productive tensions of the histories and lineages of neurodivergence marked by inequities, erasure, and epistemic injustice (Catala et al. 2021). Although self-diagnosis is often accepted among communities, individuals without diagnosis face delegitimization in navigating institutions, accentuating race, class, and gender disparities. How do we honor a lineage of stories of neurodivergent individuals who could not claim this identity, and what does it mean to celebrate neurodiversity and simultaneously hold space and honor the absences marked by intersecting oppressions? Using Maria Lugones's world-traveling as a method, I reflect on these tensions via narratives of my own discovery of neurodivergence and diagnosis, contextualizing it within a larger lineage of neurodivergent family who do not identify as such, as well as my encounters with varying levels of access, privilege, and understanding. I position my autoethnographic analysis against anecdotes and discursive media of the neurodiversity movement, finding that an autistic subject position complicates both femininity and gender.

Indigenous language activists talk about incommensurability all the time—in interesting ways that link language and knowledge as components of Indigenous lifeways that can't be disentangled. According to many of these scholar-activists, what is untranslatable about Indigenous languages is often what is incommensurate about Indigenous worlds. Drawing upon resources from Indigenous language-reclamation work, I outline here a nonexhaustive taxonomy of incommensurability in the literature about Indigenous philosophy of language, and gesture at the ways coalitional relationships might be built that hold space for these different varieties of incommensurability. For ease of explication and to honor Indigenous ways of knowing, I employ here an organizational metaphor rooted in my own communities’ traditions of canoe-voyaging to organize three forms of incommensurability that emerge from Indigenous philosophies of language: impassable incommensurability and strategic impassable incommensurability (big water through a rock garden), as well as incommensurability with technical passage: (heavy water through a rock garden). These forms of incommensurability, as they spring from Indigenous philosophies of language, lend themselves toward nuanced insights for careful and considerate world-traveling (à la Lugones) that holds space for epistemic and linguistic sovereignty.

Nineteenth-century US social activist contemporaries Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Sojourner Truth are memorialized as women's rights pioneers. White activists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony cemented a generational canon. Black activist Sojourner Truth anticipated the eventual crystallization of intersectionality. These figures’ historical proximity underscores the high epistemological and political stakes of claiming gendered categories, namely via “woman” as a mark of aggrievement. I link concepts of intersectionality, epistemic agency, epistemic resources, and social movement framing to examine how “woman” is asymmetrically categorized. To this end, I perform a textual analysis of memorialized documents: “Declaration of Sentiments” (1848) by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States” (1876) by Susan B. Anthony, and “Ain't I a Woman?” (1851) by Sojourner Truth. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony frame “woman” as a single-axis and vertical category, ultimately deferring to the seeming preeminence of the US nation-state. By contrast, Sojourner Truth frames “woman” as a multi-axis and horizontal category by synthesizing her feminist consciousness, lived experience of enslavement, and personal religiosity. This article revisits key memorialized events by utilizing a conceptual toolkit that interlaces feminist and social epistemology with social movement theory.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought the debate about the ethics of metaphors to the fore. In this article, I draw on blending theory—a theory of cognition—and theories of epistemic injustice to explore both the epistemic and ethical implications of metaphors. Beginning with a discussion of the conceptual alterations that may result from the use of metaphors, I argue that the effects these alterations have on available hermeneutical resources have the potential to result in a type of hermeneutical injustice distinct from the “lacuna” described by Miranda Fricker (Fricker 2007). Following, I examine how metaphors may therefore be considered “ethically bad epistemic practice,” as described by Rebecca Mason, because of how they may contribute to perpetuating an inequitable epistemic status quo (Mason 2011). Yet these same features may be used to promote epistemic justice in the context of intersectional power relationships. Situating the effects of metaphors within an inequitable yet dynamic epistemic system, I argue that foregrounding intersectional power dynamics enables us to interrogate the ethics of metaphors with consideration of both the epistemic and material consequences that may occur. I conclude by providing guidance for how, given that metaphors do epistemic work, we may use them to do ethical epistemic work.

Audre Lorde's account of the erotic is one of her most widely celebrated contributions to political theory and feminist activism, but her explanation of the term in her brief essay “Uses of the Erotic” is famously oblique and ambiguous. This article develops a detailed, textually grounded interpretation of Lorde's erotic, based on an analysis of how Lorde's essay brings together commitments expressed across her work. I describe four integral elements of Lorde's erotic: feeling, knowledge, power, and concerted action. The erotic is a way of feeling in the work a person does, which makes possible new knowledge about the self and the social environment—particularly to counteract epistemic oppression imposed by an unjust society. The erotic is a source of power by providing vision and energy for actions integrating a person's multiple commitments and political interests. It facilitates concerted action and coalition by enhancing a person's appreciation of their interests and values, while fostering embodied, personal connections that build trust based on shared vulnerability. Thus, the erotic helps build coalitions where genuine differences of perspective and experience can be examined, in resistance against an oppressive society's epistemic distortions.