[Draft] Trans people are often caught in a lose-lose bind: either they are accused of sex-based deception in virtue of hiding their “true” sex, or they are accused of sex-based make-believe in virtue of merely pretending to have a sex other than the one they “truly” have (Bettcher 2007, Kapusta 2016, Jenkins 2020, Marvin 2024, Dembroff 2024). However, while this double bind is pervasive, I argue that it is no longer the only one of its kind. I argue that trans people are also subject to a gender identity deceiver, gender identity make-believer double bind, where they are accused not of hiding or fabricating their sex, but of hiding or fabricating their gender identity: either they are accused of deceiving others about their “true” (gendered) self, or they are accused of merely pretending to have a (gendered) self that is other than the one they “truly” have. If I am right, then not only does this show that there is more to the transphobic deceiver, make-believer stereotype than is widely believed, but it also suggests that people of other marginalized identities—e.g., marginalized sexual, religious, and cultural identities—may also face their own kind of identity-based double bind. If so, then a deeper exploration of how identity-based double binds operate on marginalized individuals is necessary, particularly in prompting us to question the foundational role gender identity currently plays in the lives of many in society.

(Handout) Why is it wrong to call a trans person, a spouse who’s changed their family name, or Muhammad Ali by their birth name, and why can it be wrong to call a lover, a colleague, or a child by a nickname? I call these rejected names misnames, utterances that involve a use of a misname misnaming utterances, and the act of making a misnaming utterance misnaming. If, as is commonly believed, names are “mere tags”, then what could the wrongness of misnaming consist in? I set this research program out in “The Ethics of Misnaming”. I argue for taking seriously misnaming utterances as a unified, undertheorized class of utterances deserving of further philosophical analysis. I then put forth a framework for theorizing on the ethics of misnaming, or of the various pro tanto reasons for the wrongness of misnaming utterances: misnaming utterances can be pro tanto wrong in virtue of being utterances that linguistically derogate, psychologically offend, or unjustly ontologically constrain their targets. I then end by defending a pragmatic theory of the derogatory force of misnaming utterances: misnaming utterances pragmatically derogate in virtue of being authority-challenging speech acts, or speech acts that challenge the prima facie authority of the target to name themselves.

(Handout) if names are mere tags, then why do we care about what we are called by? In “Naming and Conferring: Why We Care About What We’re Called By”, I argue for the more general claim that dubbing utterances, besides their reference-fixing function, and addressing or calling utterances, besides their reference-guaranteeing function, also have the further pragmatic function of conferring robust social properties onto their targets. Using the conferralist model of social properties as conferred social statuses, I argue that such uses of names can function to assign a social status onto individuals—as an action that signals to other members of a social community to treat the target as deserving of certain treatment. This is partly due to the existence of certain naming-based norms that dictate what certain kinds of people ought to be dubbed, addressed, or called by. Names, therefore, are not just rigid referential designators, but are also social status designators. Accepting this conferralist theory of naming also illuminates the sense in which misnaming utterances unjustly ontologically constrain their targets: misnaming utterances are acts of conferral where the social status attempting to be conferred is one that the target rejects. Since we prima facie ought to be able to self-determine the kind of treatment we receive in a social community, misnaming utterances are thus pro tanto wrong. And, more generally, this conferralist theory of naming also helps explain why we care about what we are called by: since we care about the kinds of social beings that we are, and since our names partly make us the kinds of social beings that we are, we therefore care about what names we are dubbed, addressed, and called by.

(Handout) How can a mere acoustic articulation come to gain social import? And can such sounds be the site of moral harm? In “Acoustic Injustice”, I argue for taking seriously what I call acoustic injustice, or an injustice that arises either when a certain sound is social but ought not to be, or when a certain sound is not social but ought to be. I first argue that, regardless of whether sounds are ultimately sensory qualities, acoustic waves, or spatiotemporal events, sounds—the immediate “objects” of auditory perception—can be imbued with social significance. More precisely, following recent work in social ontology, certain sounds can come to have a collectively-assigned or systems-coordinated status function within a social system. I then argue that there are certain sounds that, in virtue of having sociality, give rise to marginalization: e.g., women that “sound (too) feminine”; slurs or misnames that “sound offensive”. I claim that these are sounds that are social but ought not to be: they ought not have their particular social function in the given context. I then argue that there are certain sounds that, in virtue of lacking sociality, also give rise to marginalization: e.g., acoustic disruptions of the sound of a protest; acoustic silencing of prisoners’ voices. These are sounds that are not social but ought to be: they ought to have the relevant social function in the given context. While there may be other coincident wrongs in each case—e.g., verbal microaggressions, speech act violations—I claim that all these cases share (at least) one wrong-making feature: they are all instances of acoustic injustice.