Outside a rather narrow segment of the academic world, the term ‘gender’ has come to function as the polite way to talk about the sexes. Males are those human beings with a range of familiar primary and secondary sex characteristics, most important being the penis; females are those with a different set, most important being the vagina, or, perhaps, the uterus. Enough said. Against this backdrop, it isn’t clear what could be the point of an inquiry, especially a philosophical enquiry, into what gender is.
But within this rather narrow segment of the academic world concerned with gender issues, not only is there no simple equation of sex and gender, but the seemingly straightforward anatomical distinction between the sexes has been challenged as well.
What began as an effort to show that men and women differ socially as well as anatomically has prompted an explosion of different uses of the term ‘gender’. Within these debates, it is not only unclear what gender is and how we should go about understanding it, but whether it is anything at all.
Participants of this seminar will explore what, if anything, gender is. We will discuss gender-specific issues in ethics and policy-making and explore how we are to address them. A further topic will be injustice between the sexes and how to address it. We will also discuss various issues from the field of sexual ethics, i.e. issues that concern aspects of human sexuality including human sexual behavior. Participants should give an oral presentation about a suitable topic of their own choice during the seminar.
Language: English/ German
Prüfungsleistung: Referat und Ausarbeitung |
