I discuss some of the 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.

Defendants in U.S. trans equality cases now standardly argue that it is not conceptually possible for discriminatory legislation targeting transgender people to violate constitutional guarantees of gender equality, because such legislation equally applies to all transgender persons regardless of gender. In fact, many have gone further to argue that anti-trans legislation cannot even be said to target transgender people specifically, as the discrimination can be easily redescribed as applying to only persons diagnosed with gender dysphoria, only persons seeking gender-affirming care—but not trans persons as a class. Increasingly, courts are finding this neutral application defense persuasive, and even those sympathetic to trans plaintiffs have responded in ways that further essentialize gender and pathologize trans people. This essay uncovers the social metaphysics and political philosophy implicit in mainstream gender equality law that give rise to the neutral application defense, and in so doing, develops and defends the first trans feminist alternative.

Transgender equality constitutes a pressing issue of gender equality. Surprisingly, however, neither philosophy nor law has conceptualized 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 is gender equality not because it has to do with sex understood as biology or sex stereotypes understood as the social roles and expectations of our assigned sex, but because transgender equality means the equality of persons systematically disadvantaged by the social meaning of our bodies being interpreted as trans—the equality of trans persons, where trans persons make up a gender category for feminist analytical purposes. I then consider 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.

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 sexuality, 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 consent, desire, objectification, and sexualization 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.

What is the nature of patriarchy, and what would it take to smash it? Can there be “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.

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.

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.

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.