[SydPhil] Macquarie Philosophy WiP Seminar on Tuesday 1 August 2023 – A/Prof Rach Cosker-Rowland

[FoA Philosophy Seminars]

Dear all,



You are invited to attend the next philosophy seminar Tuesday 1 August 2023 from 1:00 to 2:00pm.



Attend in-person at 25B Wally's Walk, Room B603.
Attend online: https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/aLD3CzvkyVCGJ1RyvC4CxcG?domain=macquarie.zoom.us
Password: seminar



Speaker: A/Prof Rach Cosker-Rowland


Title: Freedom of Gender
Abstract: Some states, such as Hungary, have banned trans people from changing their genders on their legal identification documents. Tennessee, Kansas, Montana, and North Dakota have recently enacted similar laws.  We use our legal documents to access many goods. Being unable to change one’s gender marker on one’s legal documents has been shown to significantly harm trans people. Do we have rights to change our gender on our legal identification documents? More generally, do we have rights to freedom of gender? This paper is in 4 parts. First, I sketch, and explain the plausibility of, the most popular account of the grounds of fundamental liberal rights to freedom of religious belief and expression, namely that these rights are grounded in more general right to live and act with integrity. Second, argue that our rights to live and act with integrity establish that trans people have rights to be able to change their gender markers on their legal documents so that they do not clash with their gender identities. In the third part of the paper, I draw out the implications of this argument for particular laws and policies. I argue that my argument establishes that: (i) wholesale bans on legal gender marker change such as Hungary, Tennessee, Kansas, Montana, and North Dakota’s are unjust; (ii) surgery requirements on gender marker change, which are implemented in 11 US states are unjust; (iii) the UK’s policy of requiring non-binary people to have binary gender markers on their passports is unjust; and (iv) there is a strong presumption in favour of policies, such as self-identification and gender decertification, that make it relatively easy for trans people to ensure that their gender markers do not clash with their gender identities. The final part of the paper looks beyond freedom of legal gender identification to freedom of gender more generally. It argues that in addition to basic liberal rights to live and act with integrity we have basic liberal rights to equal and inclusive treatment; these rights are also relevant to freedom of religion for they ground duties of state religious constraint. It then argues that our rights to equal and inclusive treatment and rights to live and act with integrity imply that we have rights to change our legal gender (and not just our gender markers), rights to have the gender that we are presented as on others’ legal documents not clash with our gender identities, rights to freedom of gender expression, and duties on state officials not to assert that, or adopt policies that imply that, trans people are not the genders that they take themselves to be.

For any queries relating to Macquarie Philosophy Work-in-Progress Seminars, please contact foa.philseminars at mq.edu.au<mailto:foa.philseminars at mq.edu.au>.



Best regards,

Regina


Dr Regina Fabry (she/her)
ARC Discovery Early Career Research Awardee
Editor-in-Chief of Philosophy and the Mind Sciences<https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/AR0OCANpgjCZ7Q9PMf8-fyO?domain=philosophymindscience.org> (Diamond Open Access)
Department of Philosophy
Level 7, 25B Wally’s Walk
Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia
E: regina.fabry at mq.edu.au<mailto:regina.fabry at mq.edu.au>  |  W: https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/F28gCBNqjlCDEGVk3HNPnuD?domain=researchers.mq.edu.au
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From: Regina Fabry <regina.fabry at mq.edu.au> On Behalf Of FoA Philosophy Seminars
Sent: Tuesday, July 4, 2023 8:33 AM
To: Regina Fabry <regina.fabry at mq.edu.au>
Cc: Narcyz Ghinea <narcyz.ghinea at mq.edu.au>
Subject: Macquarie Philosophy WiP Seminar Tuesday 18 July 2023 – Dr Yarran Hominh


Dear all,



You are invited to attend the next philosophy seminar Tuesday 18 July 2023 from 1:00 to 2:00pm.



Attend in-person at 25C Wally's Walk, Room C326.

Attend online: https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/xnwLCGv0oyCBj7JPos0PXTa?domain=macquarie.zoom.us
Password: Seminar



Speaker: Dr Yarran Hominh (Bard College)


Title: Affective Misdirection and the Stability of Unfreedom


Abstract: Systems of unfreedom like the global system of racial capitalism are self-stabilising. They maintain themselves in the face of concerted action to transform them. How might we understand their capacity to do so? In this paper I examine one mechanism by which such systems stabilise themselves: what I call “affective misdirection”. Affects are powerful agential forces that potentially serve as a means of social transformation. They are both epistemically powerful (they help us understand our situation and what is going wrong) and practically powerful (they motivate action). Systems of unfreedom misdirect these potentially transformative energies in ways that maintain those systems. For example, anger that should be directed against capitalist institutions for economic ills is redirected, through racism and xenophobia, toward other groups within the system. And hope that might help us imagine freer and more just social forms is redirected under capitalism towards individual success. These misdirected affects both engender support for systems of unfreedom and disrupt potential sources of collective action. The larger methodological claim this paper advances is that systemic and structural forms of understanding should be combined with individual-level moral psychological analysis.


Speaker Bio: Yarran Hominh is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Bard College. His research sits at the intersection of social and political philosophy with moral psychology. He draws liberally from a variety of traditions of thought and practice, including the pragmatist tradition, the Black radical tradition, Buddhist modernism, and anti-racist, anti-colonial, and anti-imperial praxis from around the globe. He is working on a book entitled The Problem of Unfreedom and has papers recently published or forthcoming in Philosophers’ Imprint, The Pluralist, the Journal of Legal Philosophy, Comparative Philosophy and the Journal of Confucian Philosophy and Culture. He is also the Associate Editor of the APA Studies on Asian and Asian American Philosophers and Philosophies and is on the editorial board of The Philosopher.



 For any queries relating to Macquarie Philosophy work-in-progress seminars please contact <foa.philseminars at mq.edu.au<mailto:foa.philseminars at mq.edu.au>>.



Best regards,

Regina

Dr Regina Fabry (she/her)
ARC Discovery Early Career Research Awardee
Editor-in-Chief of Philosophy and the Mind Sciences<https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/AR0OCANpgjCZ7Q9PMf8-fyO?domain=philosophymindscience.org/> (Diamond Open Access)
Department of Philosophy
Level 7, 25B Wally’s Walk
Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia
E: regina.fabry at mq.edu.au<mailto:regina.fabry at mq.edu.au>  |  W: https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/F28gCBNqjlCDEGVk3HNPnuD?domain=researchers.mq.edu.au
[Macquarie University]<https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/hp6gCD1vlpTog9BWQfZwhLh?domain=mq.edu.au/>

I acknowledge that Macquarie University stands on the lands of the Dharug Nation. <https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/iAN9CE8wmrtlR7WzKhZ9hT9?domain=mq.edu.au/>
I respect Elders, past, present, and future and recognise the continuity of knowledge <https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/iAN9CE8wmrtlR7WzKhZ9hT9?domain=mq.edu.au/>
that nurtures Country and community.<https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/iAN9CE8wmrtlR7WzKhZ9hT9?domain=mq.edu.au/>
CRICOS Provider 00002J. ABN: 90 952 801 237.

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