Hi there!

My research interrogates the political, legal, and conceptual apparatus that governs our gender embodiment. I recently moved to New York City to teach at Barnard College, Columbia University after completing graduate work at the University of Arizona.

My recent paper developing a trans feminist approach to reproductive freedom and pregnancy discrimination appeared in the Spring 2025 issue of Signs, and my essay problematizing being cisgender as an imposed and compulsory category is forthcoming in the American Philosophical Association’s APA Studies on LGBTQ Philosophy.

I have also written about how and why the prevailing understanding of gender and equality in American law has frustrated incarcerated trans women’s access to medical care and right to bodily integrity.

Curious about what my deal is? Check out my recent interviews here and here!

curriculum vitae

Research

My work examines the myriad ways legal, medical, and carceral institutions employ hidden conceptual frameworks to define, administer, discipline, and reify gender from the top down. In so doing, I craft in turn a subversive story of what gender is and how it works that begins with queer trans women of color’s lived material realities and insurgent gender practices from the ground up.

Articles

“Pregnant Persons as a Gender Category: A Trans Feminist Analysis of Pregnancy Discrimination” (Signs 50.3, Spring 2025)

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How should we make sense of pregnancy discrimination as an issue of gender equality? In a striking 1974 decision, Geduldig v. Aiello, the U.S. Supreme Court has answered that we simply cannot. Pregnancy discrimination does not constitute a form of sex discrimination prohibited by law, the 6–3 decision claims, because differential treatment based on pregnancy draws only a gender-neutral line between “pregnant women” and “nonpregnant persons,” not the gender line between women and men. While courts have since invoked Geduldig to curtail both reproductive and transgender rights, the prevailing feminist response to this line of cases is still to double down on an awkwardly cissexist conception of gender, finding the sex discrimination in the “direct” way that pregnancy is thought to connect to womanhood. The failure of that prevailing feminist response, legitimizing rather than challenging biological essentialism in legal analysis and public discourse, epitomizes a broader failure of feminist analysis and intersectional solidarity: it fails to confront the political and social problem that is pregnancy discrimination for either cis or trans people. This essay offers a trans feminist alternative. I argue that pregnancy discrimination is discrimination on the basis of sex, within the legally relevant meaning of that phrase, not because pregnancy is in one way or another distinctive to women as a gender category but because pregnant persons make up a gender category of their own. On my analysis, pregnancy discrimination comes out as a form of sex discrimination directly and immediately, not by way of womanhood.

“The Cisgender Tipping Point” (APA Studies on LGBTQ Philosophy, forthcoming)

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A generation of feminist theory following Time magazine’s 2014 proclamation of a “Transgender Tipping Point” has tried and failed to defend trans people’s “inclusion” in existing social institutions and philosophical conceptions of gender embodiment. This half-comic, fully-serious essay takes a sideways crack at centering trans people by centering cis people in the metaphysics of gender, by turning cis people into the object of our intellectual debate and scrutiny. Instead of granting cis people’s genders simply as a matter of course, I problematize, interrogate, and complicate them. Instead of allowing trans subcultural intuitions and experiences merely to count, I privilege them epistemically and metaphysically. And instead of scratching our heads all day over why and how trans people are trans, I ask why and how cis people are no longer.

Public Writing

“Putting Gender Back into Transgender Equality: On Iglesias v. Federal Bureau of Prisons (APA Blog, Law and Philosophy Series, September 2023)

I discuss issues with what I see as a gender-neutral, cis-centric conception of gender equality that has come to dominate U.S. law, focusing on the law’s systematic failure to protect incarcerated trans women’s health and bodily integrity.

Works in Progress

Please email me for the most recent drafts! :-)

“On Our Own Terms: Trans Women Crafting the Meaning of ‘Woman’ ”

Philosophical discussions of gender have not adequately appreciated the metaphysical significance of the creative, collaborative practice by which trans people come to invent and reinvent interpretations of our bodies that for the first time make genuine sense of our lived genders and gender realities on our own terms—a practice that I call trans meaning crafting. As a result, current philosophical work has missed out a lot on what gender as an empirical phenomenon even is, never mind what it can do for trans people. Drawing on a wide range of trans meaning crafting practices with a focus on trans women’s negotiation of sexual intimacy in particular, this essay motivates an analysis of trans meaning crafting as a distinctively trans feminist approach to the metaphysics of gender, on the model of inference to the best explanation. I argue that the meanings crafted by trans people on our own terms are metaphysically privileged for the straightforward reason that they best explain gender reality as we live and interpret it. Trans meaning crafting, so clarified, brings to light an empirical and explanatory basis for affirming trans people’s lived genders, not merely a moral and political one, as the literature is increasingly resorting to.

“ ‘Medical Diagnosis, Not Sex or Gender Identity’: Transgender Equality and the Neutral Application Loophole”

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Conceptual hang-ups can have real, material consequences. In a recent wave of cases, a growing number of federal courts in the U.S. have held that it is conceptually impossible for discriminatory legislation targeting trans people to violate constitutional guarantees of gender equality on the theory that trans-discriminatory legislation applies equally to all trans persons regardless of gender. In fact, some have gone still further to suggest that such legislation cannot be said to target trans people in the first place since the discrimination may be easily redescribed as applicable to only persons diagnosed with gender dysphoria, only persons seeking gender-affirming care, or only some other category of persons similarly thought to be gender-neutral—but not trans persons as a class. Anticipating a U.S. Supreme Court decision on the merits of these arguments in June 2025, this essay uncovers the social metaphysics and political philosophy taken for granted by mainstream gender equality law which give rise to the neutral application loophole, and in so doing, proposes the first trans feminist alternative.

“Taking Gender Seriously”

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Gender is a crucial part of the explanation for the substantive inequalities faced by trans people for being trans. Surprisingly, most feminist and trans philosophers today do not approach transgender equality meaningfully in gender equality terms. This essay develops and defends a trans feminist account that finally does. I start with the positive project of articulating this trans feminist account by distinguishing it from two leading analyses of transgender discrimination in U.S. law. I argue that transgender equality constitutes an issue of gender equality not because it has to do with sex understood as reproductive biology or sex stereotypes understood as the social roles and expectations of our assigned sex, but because it concerns the equality of persons systematically disadvantaged by the social meaning of our bodies being interpreted as trans—the equality of trans persons considered as a gender category for critical feminist analytical purposes. I then contrast my view with a gender-neutral, autonomy-based alternative currently popular in trans philosophy. The gender-neutral alternative fails, I conclude, precisely because it does not take the gender in transgender equality seriously.

[Paper on the relationship between gender and gender identity]

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Euthyphro is a man and he identifies as a man. The identity-first approach holds that Euthyphro is a man because he identifies as a man; the gender-first approach proposes that it's the other way around. This paper makes the first argument for the gender-first approach on trans feminist grounds. I show that the gender-first approach offers distinctive explanatory advantages for theorizing trans people’s genders on trans people's own terms and suggest that the main challenge it faces can be met by one gender-first account in particular—what I call the building brick theory of gender. On balance then the gender-first approach comes out as the more metaphysically (and as a result, methodologically and politically) promising treatment of the relationship between genders and gender identities.

[Survey of emerging work on gender subjectivity]

Teaching

Barnard College, Columbia University

Introduction to Philosophy (Spring 2026; Fall 2025)

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This course introduces students to philosophers’ attempts at confronting many of life’s great questions—why are we here? is there a higher power? do we live in a simulation? can computers think? is time travel possible? are we truly free? what’s a good life? how should we live together? what does justice require of us?

We will proceed roughly chronologically, traveling from the ancient Chinese and Greek traditions to medieval Christian, Islamic, and Jewish philosophies; to modern European philosophy; and to contemporary analytic and continental traditions.

In addition to the philosophical issues, texts, and figures we will cover, this course also aims more broadly to familiarize students with the methods and tools of the humanities, focusing on close reading, conceptual analysis, critical thinking, analytical writing, argument reconstruction, normative reasoning, and perspective taking.

Ethics (Fall 2025)

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This course surveys both traditional approaches to normative ethics and emerging critiques that challenge them. We will focus on a contrast between more armchair-style analytic ethics and more socially engaged ways of doing ethics, and we will pay special attention to the complex interplay between theories and cases. Topics will include consequentialism, deontology, virtue ethics, care ethics, non-ideal ethics, reproductive ethics, the intersection of ethics with epistemology, and existentialist ethics.

Love, Gender, and Sex (Spring 2026)

What does it mean to love, and what does it take to love well? Must true love make us “happy ever after”? Should love be exclusive? Is love between individuals or could it be communal and even political? How does love relate to gender and sex, and how might the experiences of queer, trans, and intersex people both complicate and illuminate these connections? What is gender anyway? How do we figure that out? Is it a mere coincidence that the English term ‘sex’ refers to both an activity and a system of categorization? How should we think about consent, desire, objectification, and sexualization in connection to sexual autonomy and gender equality? This course surveys philosophical questions about love, gender, and sex, and in so doing, aims to introduce students to the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of social philosophy.

Political Philosophy (Spring 2026)

How should we live together? This course considers leading answers to this question from ancient China and Greece through the European Renaissance all the way to the contemporary world, with an emphasis on the connections between normative political theories’ philosophical methodologies, substantive visions, and ideological functions. Topics will include legitimacy, justice, equality, liberty, democracy, ideology, oppression, authoritarianism, nationalism, capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, colonialism, embodiment, intersectionality, and liberation.

University of Arizona

Sex, Gender, and Love: An Introduction to Social Philosophy (Spring 2025; Fall 2024)—new Gen Ed Exploring Perspectives: Humanist course

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What is sex? Is it a mere accident that the English term ‘sex’ refers to both an activity and a system of categorization? How does sex relate to gender and love, and how might the experiences of queer and trans people both complicate and illuminate these connections? What counts as having sex in the first place, and what counts as having good sex? How should we think about pregnancy, sexuality, consent, desire, pleasure, and love in connection to sexual autonomy and gender equality? This course surveys these central questions about sex, gender, and love, and in so doing, aims to introduce students to the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of social philosophy.

Feminist Philosophy (Spring 2024; Spring 2023)

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What is the nature of patriarchy, and what would it take to smash it? Is there such a thing as “pleasure under patriarchy” in the meantime? What is it to be gendered, to be sexed, to be constructed? What does being a woman mean to queer and trans women? Who and what is feminism ultimately a movement for? In this course, we will trace the development of contemporary feminist philosophy from the early days of the women’s liberation movement to the present, with an emphasis on trans and queer voices, issues, and experiences throughout this fraught history.

Law and Morality (Winter 2023; Summer 2023; Summer 2021 × 2; Summer 2020)

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This course is an introduction to the philosophy of law in general and feminist philosophy of law in particular. We will consider several significant philosophical issues at the intersection of law and morality and explore their jurisprudential implications. Topics will include the nature of law, judicial discretion, constitutional and statutory interpretation, civil disobedience, racial equality, gender equality, sexual harassment, reproductive freedom, and LGBTQ+ equality.

Logic in Law (Fall 2022; Spring 2022)

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This course examines logical reasoning and conceptual analysis in the law, with a focus on the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation of the equal protection and due process requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment. Topics will include constitutional interpretation, stare decisis, the shadow docket, racial discrimination, sex discrimination, reproductive rights, physician-assisted suicide, and LGBTQ+ rights.

Medical Ethics (Fall 2021)

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In this course, we will examine a variety of normative issues in and about medicine. Many of the topics we are going to discuss are more or less standard in a medical ethics course, such as harm, abortion, physician-assisted suicide, medical paternalism and patient autonomy. But what makes our course distinct is we will also look at critical approaches that seek to challenge and expand the traditional themes and positions. Specifically, we will consider feminist relational conceptions of autonomy, the continued debate between biological determinism and social constructivism, epistemic injustice in the practice of medicine, the politics of reproductive care and gender-affirming care, the medical policing of intersex, trans, racialized and disabled bodies, and the connection between lived experiences of the body and structural injustice. In so doing, our aim is to further explore the ethics of medical care in light of its broader political and social significance.

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A Note on My Last Name & Pronouns

For family-related reasons, I do not go by a last name professionally. ‘Ding’ can fill in for a last name as needed.

I go by they/them and she/her.

A photo of the beautiful sunset as seen from Cemamagi Du’ag (Horned Lizard Mountain). It is raining a little. The sky is pinkish purple, and a giant rainbow sits above the city of Tucson in the distance. In the foreground, there are green shrubs with yellow little flowers blossoming. Everything looks fresh, serene, and in general just poetic and beautiful.

Sunset on Cemamagi Du’ag (Horned Lizard Mountain)