Katharine Jenkins - Amelioration and Inclusion

Katharine Jenkins writes Amelioration and Inclusion: Gender Identity and the Concept of Woman in response to Sally Haslanger’s Gender and Race. Haslanger makes the claim that in order to be considered a woman you must usually be observed or imagined to have a female body and be subordinate in a male dominant society. Though Haslanger hoped to solve the inclusion problem with this definition, Jenkins believes that she creates another one; specifically that her definition doesn’t include transgender individuals. I agree with the objection that Jenkins raises regarding Haslanger’s work excluding the trans community. It seems only fitting that if a feminist is one that fights for the rights and equality of women that the trans community who self-identity with this gender are given consideration. With that being said, I don’t believe that Jenkins should directly criticize Haslanger’s claim since it was published prior to a time when transgender individuals became more openly visible in society. Haslanger addressed one of the most pressing issue at the time, that being finding a common ground between women of different classes and races, therefore I would not consider her definition to be flawed but merely in need of an update.

In Jenkins work, her dispute against Haslanger is with regard to whether exclusion of trans individuals from Haslanger’s account is bad for feminism since male dominance is not the only or most pressing form of oppression faced by the trans community. I think in asking this question, Jenkins proposes a possible solution as to how transgender individuals can be included in the fight for women’s rights. Jenkins suggests that in defining the concept of gender we view it as a lived identity rather than Haslanger’s “internal map”. It is unfair on behalf of transgender women to exclude them from this socially made group that are females if that is how they choose to identity themselves. At the same time, it is difficult to create a feminist definition to combat sexism that includes trans individuals, as the oppression cis women face due to male dominance is only a portion of the challenges faced by transgender women. I think prior to taking another stab at an all-encompassing definition we first have to better understand the definition of gender by which the trans community lives. In order to combat this issue there needs to be a distinction between the aspects of a transgender woman’s life that coincides with that of cis women and those that don’t. While trans women share in the same subordinated oppression as cis women, cis women will never be able to grasp the other forms of oppression a transgender woman faces in her everyday life. In order for women to become unified in their fight for equality, cis women as a whole need to recognize and accept transgender women amongst themselves. Although Jenkins solution to redefine the concept of women to include transgender women is good in principle, the issue of trans acceptance needs to be combatted first.