 Philosophical Problems With the Gender-Critical Feminist Argument Against Trans InclusionAleardo Zanghellini SAGE Open, 2020, vol. 10, issue 2, 2158244020927029 Abstract: The Reform of the Gender Recognition Act: Government Consultation (2018) catalyzed a heated debate on transgender rights and trans inclusion in the United Kingdom. I start by explaining what the reforms to the U.K. system of gender recognition propose, why gender-critical feminists oppose them, and how other feminist academics have responded to their arguments. I then offer a more detailed philosophical critique of gender-critical trans-exclusionary feminist arguments. I argue that the gender-critical feminist case against trans women’s access to women-only (or sex-segregated, or single-sex) spaces suffers from a number of fallacies, and introduces modes of argument that are at odds with well-established and sound uses of practical reason. I try to make sense of these problems with gender-critical feminist thought by appealing to the idea of presupposed paranoid structuralism. I also argue that gender-critical feminists’ enthusiastic use of social media and allied online platforms may be implicated in generating some of these problems. Keywords: gender critical; transgender; terf; philosophy; humanities; gender recognition; trans exclusion; transgender law; transphobia; transgender rights; feminism (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:sagope:v:10:y:2020:i:2:p:2158244020927029 Access Statistics for this article More articles in SAGE Open |
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