Obstetric violence is a structural form of gender, medical, and sexual violence perpetrated by health providers and institutions during pregnancy, birth, and postpartum. It can produce physical, psychological, and symbolic harm to pregnant/birthing people and their families. Obstetric violence results from structural conditions in the technocratic model of birth and the acceptance of biomedicine as the authoritative knowledge in health care. This phenomenon produces patients’ loss of autonomy and capacity to provide informed consent, which increases their vulnerability to unjustified medical procedures, resulting in negative birth experiences. In this paper, I argue that individual autonomy is necessary but not sufficient for legitimately consenting to obstetric care and preventing violence. The liberal framework of individual autonomy often ignores that childbirth is a social event where multiple individuals and cultural factors influence the consent process. Consequently, I discuss the role of relational autonomy in obstetric decision-making and describe some structural barriers that negatively intervene in this process. Finally, I propose that doulas and midwives can help nurture autonomy and caregiving skills in obstetric patients and health providers. This strategy protects the informed consent process, prevents obstetric violence, and can be effective in recentering childbirth in pregnant people and their families.

In my examination of Sophocles’ Antigone, I use Beauvoir’s existential philosophy as a lens and hermeneutic model and apply her language and terms—immanence, transcendence, and ambiguity—to the original ancient text to understand the gendered metaphors of the play and to reveal an area of oversight in her superficial treatment of the tragedy. Taking this theoretical approach, I use “feminist” or “existentialist” Beauvoir (The ethics of ambiguity, The second sex) against herself, that is, her interpretation of the Antigone in “Moral idealism and political realism,” to show how existentialist freedom is achieved in the tragedy. In my reading, I cast Antigone as a figure of ambiguity, situated in an oppressive context, and I argue that she creates her own project and strives towards freedom, in the Beauvoirian sense. I also extend the subjectivity of ambiguity to Ismene and illustrate the course of her own existential freedom to portray the reversibility of the transcendence/immanence polarity in these two figures and, ultimately, to suggest that the sisters are intertwined. Inscribing my reading in a tradition of feminist interpretations surrounding the Antigone, I advance a new reading that finds in the play a feminist political theory of existentialism, inclusive of the sororal pair.

The oversight of Chinese feminist traditions in transnational feminist discourse is remarkable given China’s historical importance and vast population. Despite historical suppression by Confucianism, Chinese feminisms emerged at the turn of the last century, drawing from Marxist, anarchist, and liberal movements. While scholars increasingly recognize overlooked female thinkers like Ban Zhao, contemporary discussions of China often revolve around reconciling Confucianism and feminism. This tendency underscores the perception of Chinese feminism as a derivative of Western feminism, where modern thinkers reject local culture for transnational movements. This paper contends that Chinese feminists, including Kang Youwei and He-Yin Zhen, remained deeply rooted in their traditions. While Kang incorporated foreign ideas to advocate for feminist goals and modernize society, he predominantly engaged with traditional philosophy to address its sexist elements. Similarly, He-Yin’s anarcho-feminist approach integrated Western influences to engage with traditional Chinese thought rather than rejecting it outright. By examining prevalent gender and selfhood concepts in traditional Chinese thought, this paper elucidates the notion of “correlative sexism,” and argues that women were not primarily regarded as a “second sex” as described by Simone de Beauvoir. The paper then demonstrates how Kang and He-Yin responded to this sexist discourse, offering novel perspectives on women’s liberation and societal reform.

What would birth be like in a feminist world? In this essay, I explore this question, asking what feminist freedom means in relation to birthing. Engaging in an imaginative inquiry that is rooted in respect for plurality, I explore the multifaceted dimensions of what we, as feminists, are fighting for in relation to birth. Building on a diverse array of feminist theories and philosophies of freedom (including the work of Simone de Beauvoir, Drucilla Cornell, and Marilyn Frye) and inspired by the work of Iris Marion Young on the five faces of oppression, I outline five faces of birthing freedom, namely: (1) freedom from oppression, (2) freedom to labor, (3) freedom to be-in-relation, (4) freedom from violence, and (5) freedom to imagine. I argue that these faces are all necessary conditions for the realization of birthing freedom. At the same time, the five faces of birth freedom that I outline here are only provisional and are grounded in my specific standpoint. My approach recognizes plurality and is not meant to be exhaustive but rather hopes to spark imaginings, invite extensions and revisions, and initiate conversations.

This paper critically examines Confucian proposals for social welfare espoused by contemporary Confucian moral and political theorists, who promote a familialist, residual welfare state in which welfare provision should be the family's primary responsibility and public assistance be a last resort only available to the poor without family support. By investigating the situation in South Korea, a country whose welfare system bears a striking resemblance to the Confucian ideal, I argue that the Confucian scheme is inherently flawed. It considers poverty to be a personal failure, idealizes the family as a single unity of common interest free from power hierarchies, and lacks knowledge about social reproduction. Their proposal in actuality humiliates and excludes disadvantaged and marginalized people from social protection, abdicates the state's responsibility for the well-being of citizens, and colludes with capitalism in free riding on women's unpaid labor.

Building on Linda Martín Alcoff's analysis of subversive speech in Rape and resistance, Lori Gruen's account of entangled empathy, and what Susan Brison calls the remaking of self in Aftermath: Violence and the remaking of a self, we introduce subversive listening as a way to resist obstacles to empathetic listening after sexual violence. Specifically, we identify and aim to interrupt five overextended frameworks (legal, medical, academic, fixing, and identifying) that commonly obstruct empathetic listening. To demonstrate the practical value of our work, we conclude by showing how a reader might avoid these overextensions when engaging with V's (formerly Eve Ensler) The apology.

The paper presents a Wittgensteinian account of the concept woman, in terms of family resemblance. This approach is deemed superior to the Carnapian account, championed by Sally Haslanger, in that it allows for more inclusivity and to locate the source of sexism not so much in the very concept of woman but in the beliefs sexist people have about women. The compatibility of this account with semantic externalism is explored, as well as its relationship with stereotypes and paradigmatic examples of women. It is further shown how present-day attempts to extend the application of the concept of woman beyond human females may be made sense in terms of a change of hinges—that is, of the rules of evidential significance, which a community of speakers brings to bear on the determination of whether a person is a woman. Finally, it is argued that, despite Wittgenstein's metaphilosophical quietism, such an account is politically significant. This in turn shows that in fact Wittgenstein's metaphilosophical pronouncements far from being inimical to political and societal change may in fact be conducive to it.

In this paper, we consider a range of trans-inclusive approaches to gender concepts and how they relate to the world, from family resemblance theories to conceptual engineering. In so doing, we shall also examine several concepts that are analogous to gender and other controversial and not-so-controversial concepts, such as “vegan cheese” and “adoptive parents.” Having assessed their merits and demerits, we argue that our gender concepts are not fixed in stone but, rather, evolve alongside human practices and behavior.

The need for gender recognition is widespread, even when hypervisibility and other effects of trans antagonism make that need dangerous for trans people. This reason partially accounts for why, in trans critique, recognition is a dirty word. As a political aim, and to some extent as a moral norm, trans critiques encourage dropping recognition. On the other hand, social philosophers often view recognition as a solution to misrecognition and take recognition to be a remedy for injustice. In my view, recognition should neither be dropped nor held as a foundational norm for trans emancipation. First, I present three ways trans recognition is ambivalent. Second, evaluating Axel Honneth's observations about the entwinement of recognition and domination, I argue that recognition is an ambivalent norm for trans critique and struggle. Third, I propose studying trans recognitive practices (rather than recognition in abstract) and I illuminate what might set trans/t4t recognition acts apart from their cis-grounded analogues, centering the roles of the body and space/place as resources of trans/t4t recognitive practices, and how such practices focus on the subject's change and becoming over their identification.

In their recent book, Arendt, Natality and Biopolitics, Rosalyn Diprose and Ewa Plonowska Ziarek reconstruct Hannah Arendt's concept of natality in order to diagnose and resist biopolitical threats to democratic plurality. Their analysis leads them to engage indigenous reproductive justice organizing; that engagement is the focus of my critique. I argue that their understanding of the biopolitical targeting of indigenous people needs further development. Diprose and Ziarek tend to read indigenous organizers as working toward inclusion in the democratic plurality of settler societies. While that is the aim of some indigenous organizations and actors, that is not the aim of many, including a theorist and activist they engage, Katsi Cook (Mohawk). I suggest that their engagement with indigenous reproductive justice organizing is shaped by the important, but unthematized role settler colonialism has in Arendt's work. I further argue that Cook provides crucial theoretical and practical challenges to the settler state and its role in feminist theoretical projects of critique.

Feminists have long argued that emotions have a rightful place in politics. Anger, specifically, is often said to play a crucial role in alerting people to oppression and motivating resistance. The task of this paper is to elaborate these claims and to outline a conception of the political value of anger. In doing so, I argue against the view that anger is valuable only if and because it expresses a sound moral judgment. Instead, we should see rage, in the first place, as simply a response to having one's practical aims in the world thwarted—there need be nothing moral or righteous about this feeling for it to have political potential. Second, unlike those who highlight anger's connection with love or claims for equal dignity, I emphasize its tendency towards aggression. With this non-moralized conception of anger in hand, we can see how rage reveals practical problems in a way that can spur on a dialectical process of political articulation and organized action. The resulting standpoint from which one can articulate and resist one's oppression based on one's rage is not inherent in the experience of anger—rather, it needs to be seen as a political achievement in itself.

This study analyzes Jane Addams’ contribution to an enduring topic: how marginalized people join the public from beyond political, socioeconomic, cultural, and gendered barriers. I study Addams’ book, The Long Road of Woman's Memory (1916), which discusses the seemingly irrational devil baby case in Chicago. Using the concept of public and hidden transcripts and the method of cultural discourse analysis, I contextualize the book within the theorizing around the concept of the public by Addams’ contemporaries, Gabriel Tarde and Robert E. Park. The analysis shows that Addams’ discussion aligns with three conceptual aspects of the formation of the public. First, Addams describes the awakening of consciousness about a collectively relevant concern, and second, the emergence of interaction about the topic. Third, Addams constructs a conceptual distinction between two functions of memory, highlighting independent critical judgment as the divider between the two, which is the decisive factor that Park argues distinguishes the public from the crowd. Addams’ writing contains an unusual perspective in that she discusses development toward the formation of something like the public in a marginalized communicative culture. Instead of focusing on performative and dramatic public debate, Addams addresses discreet genres of communication and illustrates their public relevance.

Contemplating how the familiar trope of the “bad Black mother” is used to surveil, punish, and scorn Black maternal subjects this article considers how good motherhood is at once aspirational and coercive for Black mothers who are disciplined by the ever looming threat of badness and the unattainable promise of goodness. Stretching contemporary Black feminist analyses of how Black maternal revolt against anti-Black logics can be witnessed through forms of mortal sacrifice that secure future Black life, this article troubles ideals of sacrifice through an auto-ethnographic reading of maternal death as a respite from the continuous labors of goodness for the subject that tires under the relentless force of racism and its anticipations of bad Black motherhood. Badness is then explored, through personal narrative, as a form of affective resistance against the drudgery of willing towards goodness as the maternal refuses to discipline their discontent.

“Multidimensional” accounts of autonomy offer multiple, rather than unitary, dimensions along which to measure autonomy. Such accounts are significant developments in the literature and help generate nuanced, degree-based frameworks. However, transnational feminists—those theorizing feminism in light of (post)colonialism and global neoliberalism—may raise concerns about multidimensional accounts for women in the Global South. For instance, there may be worries about the generalized focus and implicit individualism that still lurks. Sympathetic to both non-unitary autonomy and transnational feminist projects, I argue that multidimensional accounts can be salvaged from such critiques with two amendments. First, they can adopt what I label a “critical” relational framing, and second, they can include intersectional identities. Using commercial surrogates in India as an example, I show how these amendments to multidimensional theories might better serve these women of color, and indeed all persons.

“What might motherhood and Europe have to do with one another?” is a question posed by Lisa Baraitser in the Foreword to the collection, Motherhood in Literature and Culture: Interdisciplinary Perspectives from Europe. The question is certainly pertinent at a time when the very concept of Europe as a geopolitical space and an imaginary construct is being interrogated and critiqued from both within and without the carefully policed borders of the European Union project. It is also pertinent given the increased amount of scholarship on the maternal produced by scholars occupying various transnational locations and positionalities, working to deconstruct unitary and essentialist ideas about mothers and motherhood. The possibility of identifying a specifically European maternal theoretical and lived space thus invites us to carefully theorize the diversity of European contexts, a diversity that is often occluded or elided by easy references to Eurocentric bias in feminist research, as well as the dis/continuities between European-based and Anglo-American feminist scholarship on the maternal. And yet, precisely because the work of mothering always unfolds within specific micro and macro geographic, social, cultural, and ideological spaces, the question merits closer attention. In this essay I consider the cluster of three books delineating the contours of an Italian, as well as a more broadly conceptualized European, philosophy of the maternal in light of these evolving academic and experiential realities.

Comparative studies have identified “Antigone's sisters” across the globe, excepting for Southeast Asia. Yet in Vietnam, there exists Kiều, the protagonist in Nguyễn Du's The Tale of Kiều, whose cultural significance is comparable to Antigone. What insights can be gained about feminist political power by comparing Antigone to Kiều? Proposing a shift in focus on Kiều and Antigone's love from the questions of who and why to how, the paper argues that their love shares three fundamental commonalities related to their living conditions, actions, and choices. First, they are women who live a life full of love in worlds where love is forbidden. Secondly, they are women who practice love during dark times. And third, they choose to love in unconventional ways, and in doing so, they engender possibilities, particularly in terms of contemplating the interplay between life, death, and freedom. This analysis demonstrates a multiplicity of women's love and the experiences that possess a transcultural dimension, one that signals a type of harmony in the resistance of war through love. Therefore, Antigone and Kiều represent a different direction of a feminist world-building project—that of constructing a world through love.

Motivated ignorance is an incentivized absence of knowledge that arises in circumstances of unequal power relations, a self-protective non-knowing which frees individuals from having to reflect on the privileges they have in virtue of membership in a dominant social group. In philosophical discussions, the term “motivated ignorance” gets used interchangeably with “willful ignorance.” In the first half of this paper, using Charles Mills’ (2007) white ignorance as the defining case, I argue that this is a mistake. A significant swath of cases of motivated ignorance are non-willful, or deep, following Rik Peels (2010). But in all cases, benefits accrued to some in virtue of their social position are gained and maintained at the expense of harms to others. In the second half of this paper, I argue that these harms are what ground attributions of culpability in cases of motivated ignorance and drive the normative requirement that the subject know better, so long as the facts in question are ordinarily and easily knowable (in a sense to be specified). Willfulness is not a necessary condition for culpability, even if it is a sufficient one.

When philosophers consider factors compromising autonomy in consent, they often focus solely on the consent-giver's agential capacities, overlooking the impact of the consent-receiver's conduct on the consensual character of the activity. In this paper, I argue that valid consent requires justified trust in the consent-receiver to act only within the scope of consent. I call this the Trust Condition (TC), drawing on Katherine Hawley's commitment account of trust. TC constitutes a belief that the consent-receiver is capable and willing to act as we expect from them. If such trust is not warranted, I argue, consent lacks the appropriate normative grounds. After establishing TC, I explore its application in the sexual arena, asserting that, due to the non-contractual dimensions of sexual activity—such as the dynamic nature of sexual desires and the absence of external factors effectively binding sexual partners to the terms of consent—trust is warranted in sexual consent by means of care. I define care as a special sensitivity and attention toward the partner's will and discuss how this approach leads to safer intimate relationships in practice.