• Chapter 1: Dehumanization as the Wrong of Social Injustice


• 1.1. Introduction


• 1.2. Against the Gender Controversy


• 1.3. Going Beyond Gender: Humanist Feminism


• 1.4. Methodological Commitments


• 1.5. Structure of the Book


• PART I: AGAINST THE GENDER CONTROVERSY


• Chapter 2: The Gender Controversy


• 2.1. Biological Determinism and Gender Terminology


• 2.2. Gender Construction


• 2.3. Uniformity of Gender


• 2.4. Sex Classification


• 2.5.Usefulness of the Sex/Gender Distinction


• 2.6. Women as a Social Kind


• Chapter 3: Nominalist Responses to the Semantic and Ontological Puzzles


• 3.1. The 'Positive' Category of Women


• 3.2. Women as a Social Series


• 3.3. Unity, Normativity, and Oppression


• 3.4. Women as a Resemblance Class


• 3.4.1. Tenability of Gender Realism


• 3.4.2. Plausibility of Resemblance Nominalism


• Chapter 4: Realist Responses to the Semantic and Ontological Puzzles


• 4.1. Women as FMP-Category


• 4.2. Social Subordination and Privilege as Marks of Gender


• 4.2.1. Ameliorative Analysis of woman


• 4.2.2. Benefits of the Revisionary Analysis


• 4.3. Gendered Social Identity as Positionality


• 4.4. Historical Essentialism


• 4.4.1. Gender as a Natural Kind


• 4.4.2. Feminist Politics and Historical Essentialism


• 4.5. Upshot of the Discussion


• Chapter 5: Deflating the Puzzles


• 5.1. Deflating the Semantic Puzzle


• 5.2. Deflating the Ontological Puzzle


• 5.2.1. Conventionalism is Unintuitive


• 5.2.2. The Abolitionist Implication is Undesirable


• 5.2.3. The Trait/ Norm Covariance Model


• 5.2.4. Ontological Commitments, and the Trait/ Norm Covariance Model


• 5.3. The Gender Controversy Deflated


• PART II: NORMATIVITY ANEW


• Chapter 6: Dehumanization


• 6.1. Introduction


• 6.2. Why Humanism


• 6.3. Rape as Dehumanizing


• 6.3.1. The Objectification Argument


• 6.3.2. The 'Soul Murder' Argument


• 6.4. Dehumanization in General


• 6.4.1. Our Legitimate Interests


• 6.4.2. Moral Injury


• 6.5. Dehumanization and Feminism


• Chapter 7: Forms of Injustice and Emancipatory Social Theory


• 7.1. Introduction


• 7.2. Emancipatory Social Theory: Desiderata


• 7.3. Forms of Injustice


• 7.3.1. Discrimination


• 7.3.2. Domination


• 7.3.3. Oppression: A First-Stab


• 7.3.4. Oppression: A Second-Stab


• Chapter 8: Contours of Injustice and Feminist Social Theory


• 8.1. Introduction


• 8.2. Contours of Injustice


• 8.3. Feminist Social Theory and Dehumanization


• 8.4. The Argument So Far


• Chapter 9: Overcoming Dehumanization


• 9.1. Freedom


• 9.2. Human Flourishing


• 9.3. Equality


• 9.3.1. The Basic Picture


• 9.3.2. Objections and Clarifications


• 9.3.3. Democratic Equality


• 9.4. Humanist Feminism: Final Remarks


• Bibliography

Mari Mikkola is Tutorial Fellow at Somerville College and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford. She works mainly on feminist philosophy, and specifically on feminist metaphysics, gender, and pornography. In addition, she has research interests in social ontology, broadly conceived.

The book offers a feminist examination of contemporary social injustices. It argues for a paradigm-shift away from feminist philosophy organized around the gender concept woman, and towards humanist feminism.