Papers by Maren Behrensen
This paper is a reflection on Peter Railton's keynote speech at the Central APA in February 2015,... more This paper is a reflection on Peter Railton's keynote speech at the Central APA in February 2015, especially on his disclosure of his struggle with clinical depression. Without attempting to deny the significance of Prof. Railton's outing, We want to draw attention here to something that did not prominently figure in his speech: structural features of the philosophical profession that make people sick. In particular, we focus on the " ideology of smartness " in philosophy and how it creates a pathological double-bind for those that come into the discipline from the margins, or find themselves in its margins.
Filosofisk Tidskrift 35:3 (2014), 17-25.
När läkaren deklarerar ett nyfött barns kön handlar det inte bara om att fastställa "biologiska f... more När läkaren deklarerar ett nyfött barns kön handlar det inte bara om att fastställa "biologiska fakta". Läkarna gissar det nyfödda barnets framtid; de antar att barnets kön vid födelsen avgör det genus det kommer ha som vuxen. Ibland, om barnet fötts med oklara könsegenskaper (som en blandning av "kvinnliga" och "manliga" kromosomer, eller en ofullständigt formad penis eller vagina) är det mycket svårt eller omöjligt att fastslå barnets kön. Från 1960-talet och framåt har sådana barn utsatts för "könsanpassande" operationer, med syftet att "fixa" deras kön, oftast utan medicinsk indikation (Karkazis 2008, Greenberg 2012). 2 Dessa operationer har ofta stympande och andra långsiktiga mediciniska konsekvenser, och har kritiserats skarpt av aktivister sedan 1990-talet (Dreger 1999).
Identity as Convention: Biometric Passports and the Promise of Security
Journal of Information and Communication in Society 12:1 (2014), 44-59.
In the Halfway House of Ill Repute: Gender Verification under a Different Name, Still No Contribution to Fair Play
Sport, Ethics and Philosophy 7:4 (2013), 450-466.
The aftermath of Caster Semenya’s resounding victory in the women’s 800 meters at the 2009 Athlet... more The aftermath of Caster Semenya’s resounding victory in the women’s 800 meters at the 2009 Athletics World Championships in Berlin highlighted the ethical and scientific flaws of gender verification in women’s athletics. It has led the governing international body of professional athletics, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), to adopt new rules regarding athletes with DSDs in women’s competitions in 2011 (Regulations on Hyperandrogenism). The International Olympic Committee (IOC) followed suit and adopted a similar set of rules in 2012. Locating the practice of gender verification in a history of sexist stereotyping of women athletes (in section 1), I argue (in section 2), following other critics, that the IAAF’s new rules suffer from the same ethical flaws as their predecessors; and specifically that they still invite and rely on qualitative measuring of an athlete’s femininity and masculinity. In the central section of this paper (section 3), I relate the practice of gender verification to the vexing question of what constitutes an unfair advantage in sports. I suggest, first, that athletes with a DSD should be a liberty to exploit competitive advantages their conditions might confer on them, just as most athletes in most sports are at liberty to exploit their congenital traits (the only irrelevant difference being that DSDs are construed as gendered advantages). In a second step, I argue that gender segregation in sports and gender verification practices cannot both be defended by an appeal to fairness. If we want to preserve gender segregation, then we ought to give up gender verification; and if we are not prepared to give up regulation of gendered congenital advantages, then we ought to give up gender segregation in favor of a classification system that tracks genetic predisposition rather than gender.
APA Newsletter on Philosophy and LGBT Issues 12:2 (2013), 2-7.
with Samantha Brennan: "Margins within the Marginal: Bi-invisibility and Intersexual Passing"
Passing/Out: Queer Identities Veiled and Revealed, ed. Dennis R. Cooley and Kelby Harrison, Ashgate 2012
Drafts by Maren Behrensen
In What We Owe to Each Other, T. M. Scanlon argues that the universal demands of morality and the... more In What We Owe to Each Other, T. M. Scanlon argues that the universal demands of morality and the partial demands of friendship are compatible, once we recognize that accepting moral demands is a necessary condition for the possibility of friendship. He supports his view with the argument that one cannot be friends with amoral persons. In this paper, I reject this view and I argue that Scanlon's approach only offers a superficial solution. It functions as a solution only if either we adopt a conception of amoralism that is so narrow as to be indistinguishable from immorality, or if we adopt a concept of friendship that is so narrow as to exclude a great number of actual friendships. Scanlon's proposed solution remains superficial, in part because he does not acknowledge the extent to which people can have moral commitments and be moved by moral reasons and yet fall short of any plausible universal standard of what it means to be a moral person, and in part because he exaggerates the role moral commitments play in the lives of actual people.
In his paper "The Ground-Floor of the World" (2000), Philippe Van Parijs argues that with the eme... more In his paper "The Ground-Floor of the World" (2000), Philippe Van Parijs argues that with the emergence of English as the international lingua franca of science, trade, and engineering, countries in which English is not a native language "face a cruel dilemma. Either they will have to lose their souls or they will have to lose their hearts. Either they will have to put up with the erosion of their cultures or they will have to stomach the dismantling of their solidarity systems." (218-9) The emergence of English as an international lingua franca implies that the majority of persons who learn a language other than their native language(s) will choose English, because it enhances their social and economic opportunities. It also implies that non-English speaking countries will have a strong incentive to focus on English in their foreign language education in order to make their young citizens competitive in a globalized economy. In turn, English speaking countries will become increasingly attractive destinations for well-educated and high-skilled persons who wish to migrate. As a result, non-English speaking countries will become more vulnerable to brain drain, unless they create strong incentives for their well-educated and high-skilled citizens to stay. Creating such incentives, e.g., tax breaks for high-skilled labor income, will require that non-English speaking states roll back their welfare systemsor that they relax the protection of their national language(s) in order to accommodate English speakers. Assuming that non-English speaking states don't want to harm their welfare systems, they must choose between two evils: suffering a brain drain, or suffering a culture drain.
Conference Presentations by Maren Behrensen
Ethical analysis of human sexual activity appears to be divided into two main philosophical camps... more Ethical analysis of human sexual activity appears to be divided into two main philosophical camps: sexual libertarians and sexual idealists. Sexual libertarians argue that voluntary, informed consent is necessary and sufficient for licit sexual activity. Sexual idealists, in contrast, suggest that voluntary, informed consent may be necessary, but is not sufficient for licit sexual activity. Idealists claim that for sexual activity to be acceptable, it must conform to an ideal (procreation, sex as an expression of love, or as an expression of genuine, mutual desire).