Faculty Research Fellows Lunch with Ray Briggs

Ray Briggs: "All The Feels"

 

We argue that the concept of gender identity is overloaded in a way that enables medical gatekeeping and transphobic rhetoric, and obstructs self-discovery for trans people.  The overloading of this concept constitutes a hermeneutical injustice: the phenomenon that occurs, in Miranda Fricker's words, "when a gap in collective interpretive resources puts someone at an unfair disadvantage when it comes to making sense of their social experiences."  We propose a replacement concept, gender feels, which we argue has the potential to paint a more just and accurate picture of trans experience.