The Wrong of Injustice

Dehumanization and its Role in Feminist Philosophy

Mari Mikkola

Studies in Feminist Philosophy

Presents a new humanist conception of feminism
Argues for paradigm-shift in focus away from feminist philosophy organized around the gender concept "woman"
Relates to contemporary social injustices such as those due to patriarchy or racism

The Wrong of Injustice

Dehumanization and its Role in Feminist Philosophy

Mari Mikkola

Studies in Feminist Philosophy

Description

This book examines contemporary structural social injustices from a feminist perspective. It asks: what makes oppression, discrimination, and domination wrongful? Is there a single wrongness-making feature of various social injustices that are due to social kind membership? Why is sexist oppression of women wrongful? What does the wrongfulness of patriarchal damage done to women consist in? In thinking about what normatively grounds social injustice, the book puts forward two related views. First, it argues for a paradigm shift in focus away from feminist philosophy that is organized around the gender concept woman, and towards feminist philosophy that is humanist. This is against the following theoretical backdrop: Politically effective feminism requires ways to elucidate how and why patriarchy damages women, and to articulate and defend feminism's critical claims. In order to meet these normative demands an influential theoretical outlook has emerged: for emancipatory purposes feminist philosophers should articulate a thick conception of the gender concept woman around which feminist philosophical work is organized. However, Part I of the book argues that we should resist this move, and that feminist philosophers should reframe their analyses of injustice in humanist terms. Second, the book spells out a humanist alternative to the more prevalent gender-focus in feminist philosophy. This hinges on a notion of dehumanization, which Part II of the book develops. The argued for understanding of dehumanization is used to explicate the wrongness-making feature of social injustices, both in general and of those due to patriarchy. Dehumanization is not another form of injustice-rather, it is that which makes forms of social injustice unjust. The book's second part then provides a regimentation of social injustice from a feminist perspective in order to spell out the specifics of the proposed humanist feminism, and to demonstrate how it improves some non-feminist analyses of injustice too.

The Wrong of Injustice

Dehumanization and its Role in Feminist Philosophy

Mari Mikkola

Studies in Feminist Philosophy

Chapter 1: Dehumanization as the Wrong of Social Injustice
1.1. Introduction
1.2. Against the Gender Controversy
1.3. Going Beyond Gender: Humanist Feminism
1.4. Methodological Commitments
1.5. Structure of the Book
PART I: AGAINST THE GENDER CONTROVERSY
Chapter 2: The Gender Controversy
2.1. Biological Determinism and Gender Terminology
2.2. Gender Construction
2.3. Uniformity of Gender
2.4. Sex Classification
2.5.Usefulness of the Sex/Gender Distinction
2.6. Women as a Social Kind
Chapter 3: Nominalist Responses to the Semantic and Ontological Puzzles
3.1. The 'Positive' Category of Women
3.2. Women as a Social Series
3.3. Unity, Normativity, and Oppression
3.4. Women as a Resemblance Class
3.4.1. Tenability of Gender Realism
3.4.2. Plausibility of Resemblance Nominalism
Chapter 4: Realist Responses to the Semantic and Ontological Puzzles
4.1. Women as FMP-Category
4.2. Social Subordination and Privilege as Marks of Gender
4.2.1. Ameliorative Analysis of woman
4.2.2. Benefits of the Revisionary Analysis
4.3. Gendered Social Identity as Positionality
4.4. Historical Essentialism
4.4.1. Gender as a Natural Kind
4.4.2. Feminist Politics and Historical Essentialism
4.5. Upshot of the Discussion
Chapter 5: Deflating the Puzzles
5.1. Deflating the Semantic Puzzle
5.2. Deflating the Ontological Puzzle
5.2.1. Conventionalism is Unintuitive
5.2.2. The Abolitionist Implication is Undesirable
5.2.3. The Trait/ Norm Covariance Model
5.2.4. Ontological Commitments, and the Trait/ Norm Covariance Model
5.3. The Gender Controversy Deflated
PART II: NORMATIVITY ANEW
Chapter 6: Dehumanization
6.1. Introduction
6.2. Why Humanism
6.3. Rape as Dehumanizing
6.3.1. The Objectification Argument
6.3.2. The 'Soul Murder' Argument
6.4. Dehumanization in General
6.4.1. Our Legitimate Interests
6.4.2. Moral Injury
6.5. Dehumanization and Feminism
Chapter 7: Forms of Injustice and Emancipatory Social Theory
7.1. Introduction
7.2. Emancipatory Social Theory: Desiderata
7.3. Forms of Injustice
7.3.1. Discrimination
7.3.2. Domination
7.3.3. Oppression: A First-Stab
7.3.4. Oppression: A Second-Stab
Chapter 8: Contours of Injustice and Feminist Social Theory
8.1. Introduction
8.2. Contours of Injustice
8.3. Feminist Social Theory and Dehumanization
8.4. The Argument So Far
Chapter 9: Overcoming Dehumanization
9.1. Freedom
9.2. Human Flourishing
9.3. Equality
9.3.1. The Basic Picture
9.3.2. Objections and Clarifications
9.3.3. Democratic Equality
9.4. Humanist Feminism: Final Remarks
Bibliography

The Wrong of Injustice

Dehumanization and its Role in Feminist Philosophy

Mari Mikkola

Studies in Feminist Philosophy

Author Information

Mari Mikkola, Tutorial Fellow, Somerville College & Associate Professor, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford, England

Mari Mikkola is Tutorial Fellow at Somerville College and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford. She works mainly on feminist philosophy, and specifically on feminist metaphysics, gender, and pornography. In addition, she has research interests in social ontology, broadly conceived.

The Wrong of Injustice

Dehumanization and its Role in Feminist Philosophy

Mari Mikkola

Studies in Feminist Philosophy

Reviews and Awards

"Taken as a whole, the monograph is an outstanding contribution to feminist philosophical scholarship, and one that I anticipate will alter the course of a number of discussions in this field in fruitful ways." - Katharine Jenkins, University of Nottingham, Mind

"Mari Mikkola's The Wrong of Injustice is a tour de force that combines a critique of recent philosophical debates about the notion of gender with an argument that feminist philosophy should adopt a "humanist" normative position rather than a specifically feminist one. ... The book is an important and ambitious contribution to feminist philosophy and deserves to be studied by both specialists and students. It would be ideal for an advanced undergraduate or graduate seminar owing to its careful exposition and critique of many of the main themes within contemporary feminist philosophy. ... Mikkola's book displays an impressive breadth of research and a multitude of dense, detailed arguments. ... It displays a mastery of diverse philosophical literatures from feminist metaphysics to the (not necessarily feminist) social philosophy of discrimination, domination, and oppression." - Natalie Stoljar, Ethics

"Mikkola's book The Wrong of Injustice undertakes a bold paradigm shift in feminist philosophy. She has provided oodles of arguments to support it; but also, as in any paradigm shift, the real power of the work comes from clearing space for new and enlightening ways of thinking. There are many of us looking for non-ideal theory—not just non-ideal commitments—to guide the normative dimension of our work. Mikkola's book provides a model, in fact, a landmark, to guide us as we move ahead." - Sally Haslanger, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

"Mikkola's book is a powerful and original argument for neo-humanist feminism." - Charlotte Witt, University of New Hampshire