Category: queries from readers

Reader Query: Leading Female Aestheticians?

jennysaul21 Comments

Mahlet Zimeta writes:

I’m co-chairing with Bence Nanay (Antwerp/Cambridge) the 2013 annual conference for the British Society of Aesthetics. We’ve been asked to come up with some names of possible keynote speakers for two keynote slots, and we have also been soliciting contributions. But all the suggestions so far, bar one, have been male. We are unhappy with this situation. So I’d be very grateful for your help or the help of SWIP members with any suggestions.

We are after
– Leading female aesthetician

– Leading female non-aesthetician who might have published some work in aesthetics or whose work might bear on aesthetics (for example, someone from Mind, Ethics, Metaphysics, Social Philosophy)

The speakers do not need to be UK-based, because there is a budget for overseas travel expenses, though UK preferred if possible because we are keen to nurture and promote UK philosophers.

She’s also keen to hear suggestions for symposia or author-meets critics sessions.

Reader Query: Anthology for Feminist Practical Ethics

Jender1 Comment

I am looking for suggestions for an anthology to use in teaching Feminist Practical Ethics next semester. I have in mind beginning the course with an introduction to feminist methodologies, followed by addressing various ethical issues from a Feminist perspective. I am looking for an anthology that addresses some of the more recent issues in Feminism (including, but by no means limited to) transgender issues, women in the military, reproductive issues, the family, and disability issues. I would prefer to address these from a global perspective. I appreciate any suggestions you may have regarding an anthology. Thank you.

Reader query: what do you say to the ignorant or anti-feminist?

Jender24 Comments

A reader writes:

I’m new to the fascinating world of philosophy, especially feminist philosophy, and I would be very thankful if you could answer a couple of questions for me!

What I realised since following your blog is that you guys don’t bother with the petty arguments about feminism (I could be wrong, though, as I’ve only recently started following this blog)….

I find myself lost for words when I’m stuck in debates about how “feminists hate men” and how “feminists want men to get in trouble for [insert anything here] but not when a woman does the same thing”.

And also, I can’t help feeling discouraged by the majority’s attitudes towards feminism. I see sexism everywhere (e.g. a TV ad in which two men are fighting each other in a crowd of people and the winner walks off with a pretty girl in revealing clothes.), but people’s responses are always that feminists take everything so seriously, etc.

How do you guys deal with society’s belittling attitudes? I know it’s a silly question and I’m expecting answers such as “if we don’t do it, it will never change”, but I thought it’s better to ask than to just sit here and imagine what you would say.

Reader Query: Feminists on duties to oneself?

Jender2 Comments

A reader writes:

I’ve been doing some research on duties to oneself and have become interested in what feminists writers or feminist writings have had to say on that topic. But I’ve found very little directly on duties to oneself and only a small amount that is more indirectly related (e.g., Robin Dillon’s work on self-respect). Doubtless there are sources here that I have simply failed to unearth. Is there feminist work out there on duties to oneself?

Reader query: AOS by gender?

Jender3 Comments

I seem to remember seeing some data about the most common AOSes in Philosophy broken down by gender, and now I can’t seem to find it. I’m working on a piece about the relationship between the climate for women in philosophy, and the reception of feminist philosophy, and would love to be able to cite this data. In my recollection, “Feminist Philosophy” was one of the largest listed AOSes for women. Do you know where I might find this?

Reader query regarding Logic, Eloise and Abelard

Jender7 Comments

I’m a logician/philosopher of logic and recently I’ve been working in game theoretic semantics. In this area, it is quite common to talk about two game players: Abelard and Eloise. The normal way of things is that Eloise tries to show that there is a model for a collection of sentences and Abelard tries to show that there isn’t. Or Eloise tries to show that a sentence is true in a particular model and Abelard tries to show that the sentence isn’t true in the model. Eloise tends to show things are true or things exist (the E is connected to the existential quantifier) and Abelard plays the dual role (associated with the universal quantifier). Along with this choice of names comes the practice of using feminine pronouns for Eloise and masculine pronouns for Abelard.

Wilfrid Hodges says this in the Stanford entry Logic and Games:

“There are two players. In general we can call them ∀ and ∃. The pronunciations ‘Abelard’ and ‘Eloise’ go back to the mid 1980s and usefully fix the players as male and female (though feminist logicians have asked about the propriety of this type-casting).”

The only hint of the feminist logicians’ question that I can find is page 12 of the file http://wilfridhodges.co.uk/history16.pdf from Hodges’ website. Here, he describes how he introduced the use of the names and mentions that someone wanted to present a conference paper “on the dangers of personalising the mathematical content”. The conference was cancelled.

Regardless of the particular issue that Hodges is thinking about, I have been wondering whether this is a good practice or not. I’ve done a bit of twitter surveying with very limited success. One female logician said they were worried it may affect someone. One female logician said they had no problem with it. Two male logicians said they didn’t see a problem. And one female philosopher (non-logician) said she didn’t find it problematic. As you can see, I got very few responses!

Given that logic is in such a bad state of affairs in terms of gender imbalance, I want to try and get this right. I’m particularly concerned with not affecting students new to logic. I don’t want to use the convention if it is problematic; on the other hand, having any convention that encourages the use of feminine pronouns and examples of women involved in logic may be a good thing.

I’d appreciate any thoughts, comments, or references that you may have.

First day of class for a white man teaching feminist philosophy

Jender52 Comments

A reader writes:

I’m going to start teaching a feminist philosophy class next
week and I was sort of thinking that on the first day it would be
worthwhile to *some how* broach the question, which I expect to be on
many of the students minds once they see me, of why a white dude is
teaching a class on feminism. Maybe something as simple as a joke,
but more likely opening it up for a brief discussion, with the aim of
coaxing the conversation roughly towards ideas such as that feminism
is good for everyone, patriarchy and bias can hurt anyone, nobody is
exempted from power relations, and we wouldn’t ordinarily think twice
about someone being concerned about injustices or problems that they
didn’t directly suffer from (poverty, climate change, disease). As I
write this, it seems like no big deal, but I guess I was wondering if
you had any pointers or good examples that work for these purposes?
There’s a tiny part of me that wants to say nothing about it at all
and just act like it’s just obvious and run-of-the-mill for me to be
doing this.

Wise thoughts?