3 thoughts on “Normativity and Gender Identity”

1. Rowland, Richard says:

   5 years ago at 15 h 45 min

   Hi Khang!
   Very glad you enjoyed the account. Good question abut non-binary identities. On p. 735 of her Ergo paper, Jenkins says:
   ‘A subject S has a non-binary gender identity iff S’s internal ‘map’ is neither formed so as to guide someone classed as a woman through the social or material realities that are, in that context, characteristic of women as a class, nor formed to guide someone classed as a man through the social or material realities that are, in that context, characteristic of men as a class.’
   Jenkins basically defines non-binary identities via negation of binary identities and distinguishes non-binary from agender, for instance, by holding that to be agender is to not have an internal map whereas to be non-binary is to have a map but one that doesn’t cohere with those of men or women. I was thinking that we could adapt the general norm-relevancy account along these lines: if we’re non-binary we experience some gender norms as relevant to us but the set that we experience doesn’t match up with those associated with the relevant gender in our social context. (If we’re agender we just don’t experience any as relevant to us).
   With genderfluid we can hold that to be genderfluid is to experience the norms associated with G1 as relevant to you sometimes or in some contexts and to experience the norms associated with G2 as relevant to you in others. (This is also Jenkins’ view on pp. 735-736 of the same article).

   I’m a little bit worried about this strategy – though my worry here isn’t specific about non-binary gender identities I don’t think. I’m tempted to think that some people have a gender identity G that is explained by their experiences of norm-relevancy but does not line up to the dominant understanding of what the norms associated with G are in their social context – because they hold revisionary or radical views about what it is to be G.
   But I’m tempted to think that this isn’t so much a problem with the norm-relevancy account but is rather an issue with the fact that what the norms associated with particular genders are or should be is contested, and can differ depending on one’s sub-culture. This makes me tempted to say that we should distinguish two different things that a view of gender identity could do: first, give an account of what most generally gender identities consist in or are explained by; second, give an account of what distinguishes particular gender identities from one another. This is a bit like how we might distinguish between, first, views in metaethics (Cornell realism, Schroeder’s desire-based account, expressivism, non-naturalism, constructivism) that give accounts of what type of thing moral properties are or are explained by – and you might think the task of non-error-theoretic views is to vindicate the existence of normative or moral properties. And then second, views that give distinct accounts of what particular normative properties are: e.g. how we should distinguish between the property of being wrong, the property of being right, the property of being good, and the property of being bad. (E.g. buck-passing, value-based, fitting-attitude accounts, non-reductive views, Thomson’s standard based view, etc). I think that what I’m most interested in here is allowing us to do the something like the former task but with regards to gender identity. Jenkins does take on the second task in her papers, but it’s not obvious that she actually needs to give definitions in order to satisfy the desiderata she gives for herself rather than give us the means to distinguish between different genders and distinguish non-binary from binary identities. Which I think the account does even if we don’t necessary settle on a particular account of how they are distinguished.
   (Elizabeth Barnes seems to be making a similar distinction to the one that I’m making here in her ‘Gender and Gender Terms’ though I’m not sure that it can be sensibly called the same kind of distinction).

   Anyway, let me know what you think. Any further thoughts, comments, or ideas, would be a great help.

   Best,
   Richard

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2. Ton, Khang says:

   5 years ago at 8 h 49 min

   Dear Richard,

   Thank you so much for this wonderful talk. I really enjoyed it. I’m curious to see how the Norm-Relevancy Account applies to cases of nonbinary gender identity. According to the Norm-Relevancy Account: For A to have the nonbinary gender identity is for it to seem to A that there is strong non-instrumental normative reasons for A to conform with or live-up to the norms that are associated with nonbinary gender identity in A’s social context.
   One potential worry for the Norm-Relevancy Account as it applies to nonbinary gender identities may be a) it is unclear what the norms associated with nonbinary gender identity are. It seems that some people who identify as nonbinary are choosing not to live-up to the gendered norms of the dominant binary gender ideology; b) people who identify as nonbinary does not form a monolithic group, which may make it difficult to understand what it means for their normative experiences to be non-veridical.
   I’d also be curious to see how the Norm-Relevancy Account applies to other gender identities: genderqueer, genderfluid, agender, and pangender.
   Thank you.

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   1. Ton, Khang says:

      5 years ago at 8 h 51 min

      Please excuse my grammatical errors in the earlier comment.