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Responsibility for Sexual Injustices: Toward an Intersectional Account

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 May 2022

Erinn Cunniff Gilson
Erinn Cunniff Gilson*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Merrimack College, 315 North Turnpike Street, North Andover, MA, 01845, USA
*
Corresponding author. erinngilson@gmail.com
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Abstract

Public discussion of sexual victimization has intensified within the US context and globally. One noteworthy feature of recent public discourse in the US is that it calls for a broadening of responsibility with respect to both the parties involved and the forms of sexual victimization for which people are held to account. Yet often the narratives about responsibility and practices of responsibility-taking that dominate in this discussion remain individualizing and penalizing. This essay takes stock of the myriad failures of responsibility for sexual injustices in these existing practices and narratives. The first section outlines four philosophical objections to common ways of thinking about responsibility. The second section extends these objections by analyzing the dominant neoliberal narrative framework for responsibility so as then to critique how responsibility is thought about and practiced in relation to sexuality. Finally, given the failures of these narratives and practices, the third section elaborates an alternative that can redress them: an intersectional feminist account of responsibility for sexual injustices that is nonpunitive and takes responsibility to be an intentional practice of altering social relations.

Type
Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , Spring 2022 , pp. 422 - 446
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Hypatia, a Nonprofit Corporation

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