Morteza Hadjizadeh (3:30)

Fascinating, fascinating story. And I'm really interested to know about the idea of this book. And I love short introduction. Oxford short introductions. This one was quite fascinating to me, Feminist philosophy. Could you talk about the title of the book? And to just set the scene, what is it about? Is it about philosophy from a feminist perspective or is it a range of issues that feminist philosophy is concerned with?

Professor Katherine Jenkins (3:57)

Yeah, good question. So in terms of how the book came about, obviously there's this series of these. I've got it here, these very short introductions. They're so kind of like little and kind of pocket sized. I've used them in my own work. Like I've picked up the one on, I don't know, social anthropology or something to be like, what is that? So I knew about the series and I understand that there was a pre existing volume on feminism, but it was from a more kind of sociology, sociological and historical perspective, which makes total sense. And I think it was identified by the series editors that there was a gap in feminist philosophy and there's a range of titles on different types of philosophy. So there was this kind of gap. There was the feminism volume and there was the volumes on different types of philosophy and it seemed right, I think, to them and also to me, that feminist philosophy should get its own volume. So I was approached and asked to write it, and I was very relieved not to have to think of a title because I'm quite bad at titles. So it was very enjoyable for me to be, like, invited to write this book where there was no room for kind of getting fancy with it. The title was the Thing, a very short introduction, and that's kind of the end of discussion. So I enjoyed that. In terms of the rest of your question, you were asking about, like, what the book is doing or how it's conceptualizing feminist philosophy. Is that right?

Morteza Hadjizadeh (5:09)

Yes. Yeah.

Professor Katherine Jenkins (5:11)

So in the book, in the first chapter, I think about a few different ways of thinking what feminist philosophy is. I think it's not obvious what it is. I hope people pick the book up to find out, but I think it's not obvious what it is. And there's different ways you could approach that idea. I think it's different from some kinds of philosophy, so say Marxist philosophy. There's, like, a key figure that it's kind of hooked into. Right. And I think if you think about, like, well, maybe feminist philosophy is philosophy that's kind of hooked into women, but women have written about so many different philosophical topics, and many women and philosophers have argued for things that don't seem very much in the spirit of a kind of feminist political project that doesn't seem like it's going to get us what we want either. And in the end, what I argue or what I suggest is that we can usefully think about feminist philosophy as philosophy done in the service to feminist aims, broadly understood as the aim of emancipating women or ending the oppression of women. So I think it's philosophy that has a particular kind of animating purpose. It's not disinterested. It is aiming at a certain kind of social progress, social change, but it can do that in lots of different ways. So, for example, feminists writing about abortion, for example, have had some quite particular types of social change, particular kind of legislative situations that they want to bring about. That's very immediate, that connection. Feminists, logicians. It might not be as obvious what the kind of change in the law that might come about or social change that might come about from that, for example. But I still see that as in the service of feminist philosophy because it is in the. Oh, sorry. In the service of feminism because it's seeking to improve our understanding of ourselves and our place in the world in ways that will lead us to move away from gender oppression, or at least I take it that that's the idea. And so one consequence of thinking about feminist philosophy in that way is that whether or not something is a particular piece of philosophical work counts as feminist philosophy or not. I don't think that's a kind of neutrally determinate thing. I think that that's a judgment that you have to make. So if somebody was doing some philosophy that said that women should obey their husbands because that's how they can flourish and it's good for women to flourish, they might say, well, that's in the interests of women. So it's feminist philosophy. I would argue that that's not in the interests of women. So it's not feminist philosophy. And we would have a political disagreement. So I think you can't disentangle the. What feminist philosophy is from the question, from a kind of political disputes. Basically.

Morteza Hadjizadeh (7:42)

It's a great. And I'm fine for that.

Professor Katherine Jenkins (7:43)

I think that's.

Morteza Hadjizadeh (7:44)

Yeah, yeah. I was actually thinking a few days ago, I don't remember if I was in a discussion with a friend of mine or not, you know, because most of the pressing challenges in the world, it. Feminists have kind of, well, taken up those issues. Environment is a feminist issue. Capitalism is a feminist issue. Low wages a feminist issue. And I quite like the analogy you made. Like when you say Marxist philosophy, you know what you're talking about. This is more or less a unified tradition. But when it comes to feminist philosophy, that's not really the case. It picks up lots of different issues that may, at least on the surface, it may not be a feminist issue, but when you delve deep into it, you do understand that it's quite interrelated. Environment is one of them. You know, that's why I was really interested myself in ecofeminism and environmental studies. And I was quite, let's say, pleasantly surprised. Not surprised. I mean, I was happy when I read about that in your book as well.

Professor Katherine Jenkins (8:40)

Yes, yes. It's important to include for sure.

Morteza Hadjizadeh (8:43)

Yeah, absolutely right. Yeah. And before we get to. We talk about other parts of the book, I do want to say that I quite love the chapter. The title of the chapters. You say you're not good at choosing titles, but Are Women Oppressed? Is the Personal political. What is a Feminist issue? Who's to say? I think it's the kind of invite people to pick up and read the book. And it's quite easy. This is quite short and easy read as well. But it raises lots of questions.

Professor Katherine Jenkins (9:10)

I'm glad.

Morteza Hadjizadeh (9:11)

Thank you. Let's talk about the role of language and terminology in feminist philosophy. And why is it important? Because especially in the United States nowadays, you know, whenever people talk about gender, they ask, what is a woman? Define a woman. What is a man? Define a man. And a lot of feminists deliberately resist coming up with a clear cut, let's say, definition of what a woman is. But it all goes back to the idea of language. Can you talk about the role of language and terminology in feminist philosophy?

Professor Katherine Jenkins (9:45)

Sure. So when I was writing the book, I thought a lot about language and terminology because on the one hand, I think it's very important to make considered choices about the language and terminology one uses. And I think that there are political stakes in our language choice and it's not always, I think it's not adequate to say, well, here's what I meant, don't worry about the words that I use. They're a distraction. I don't buy that. At the same time, I was very conscious that the trends, or not trends, but the practices around language and the conventions and what different words signal changes quite a lot over time. I was hoping to write a book that was interesting to read now, but that wouldn't date too much because they're kind of, you know, they're meant to kind of last for a while these the books in this series. So I was kind of thinking about how it would stand the test of time in terms of language. And I kind of realized that that wasn't something I could make it proof against that kind of shift. All I could do was acknowledge it. So I have a note in the book where I say, look, I've chosen the language I'm using carefully, but it's going to change. And if it doesn't signal in the future what I wanted it to, please read it with an awareness of that flux in mind. Language does matter, I think. I mean, writing this book was partly interesting because in a way, the brief is to kind of present a selection of views within the field, not to kind of push my own views. In my other academic work, I've argued that the focus on the question what is a woman? As a linguistic question, what does that word mean? Is kind of a bit of a red herring. I think that there are is a complex kind of nexus of socially constructed categories in the vicinity of our talk about gender. And I think that at different times we might want to pick up on disparate aspects of that. Mostly, I think when people ask that question, what they're doing is they're signaling a stance on trans politics, on trans liberation. And the kind of preoccupation of keeping trans women out of the category of women isn't really about language or clarity. It's about oppressing trans people. So I'm kind of. Sometimes I think when we talk about language, we don't really want to be talking about language, or it's not really where the issue, or whether philosophically interesting or politically interesting or urgent issue really lies in the book. I don't get into that so much. In the book, I address the issue of the category of woman more in the spirit of searching for the kind of constituency of feminism. Right? So if feminism is a movement to end the oppression of women, like who are the women and who is it whose oppression is to be ended? That's a thorny question. And different philosophers have thought very different things on that. In the book, I try and bring some of those debates alive and that many of the key moves in those debates were maybe happening at a time when awareness among feminists generally of trans politics was not as developed as it is now, and I think should have been then, but wasn't. So part of it is trying to kind of get readers to understand why people might have not thought this was obvious, right? So you might think, well, it's obvious who the women are, people who identify as women. And I think that that answer wasn't perhaps on the table in the same way when some of the kind of key moves in these debates, especially in the kind of 80s, were happening. Which, you know, you may think what you what you will of that, but I think in order to understand the debates and kind of make sense of them, that's helpful information. So in the book I focus more on laying out why you might be worried about picking out the category of women. And broadly, in very rough terms, the thought is, well, if you pick it out biologically, you're opening the door to a kind of biological essentialism that defines women by their bodily capac that has been historically not in women's interests. And if you define it by social experiences, then it's very difficult to find any set of social experiences that all the people you have in mind have in common. And there's been some very powerful and I think very justified critiques saying that when feminists have been like, yes, we have identified the social experiences that bind women together, they turn out to be the social experiences that bind only a certain, like, only certain women together, right? Only white women or only middle class women or something like this. So either of those two avenues seems like, kind of fraught. And of course, another option on the table here is to back away from the idea that feminism is a movement to end the oppression of women. And then we have to define that kind of constituency and think of it more as a movement to end gender oppression, which then you can get a handle on gender as a social phenomenon perhaps a little bit more easily than you can get a hold on, like, the category of women in that sense. So those are some of the issues that I try and take people through in the second chapter of the book.

Morteza Hadjizadeh (14:20)

And I guess that idea of fluidity, when being flexible with terminology, is a source of power rather than weakness because it allows feminist philosophers to be able to challenge those traditional epistemologies or philosophy of language. Am I right to assume this?

Professor Katherine Jenkins (14:37)

I think I know what you mean. I think it's a view that's held. I'm not sure I fully share it. I find it difficult to disentangle my philosophical training from what's needed here. Right. Because I think there are many feminists who would say that the. Like, a dwelling in ambiguity and fluidity is very, you know, important. Important, strategically important, perhaps for deep philosophical reasons. I was trained as an analytic philosopher. I love a definition. I love a clear definition. I guess my sense is that the phenomena we're trying to define, gender, the category of woman, for example, it's not that they're, like, ineffable and fluid in a way that makes definition impossible. They're just complex in that often we think we're talking about one thing, and we're talking about, like, eight things, and then we don't need a fluid. We don't need to eschew definition. We just need eight different definitions, and they need to be really precise. So I think there is a challenge. And then you can go different ways in that challenge. Many people go the way you're suggesting, and I have a lot of respect for that. My training and perhaps personality type inclines me the other way, which is to drill down and get more specific to do definitions, but to do them really precisely. Your mileage might vary on that one.

Morteza Hadjizadeh (15:49)

Well, when I say fluidity, I'm kind of in between myself. So I do appreciate that complexity side of it, because a lot of, let's say, dissidents or the critics of feminism or the critics of the idea of gender, that they can't really see beyond those two binaries, they usually take this idea further by saying that it's. If anything goes, which is not really the case, it's just when people say that gender is not really only a binary, but it means that it's complex. It's a complex phenomenon to define and to describe. Yeah. Let me ask you another question. I really love that part of the book. When you discuss about. When you talk about feminist philosophy and you say that it needs to be defined by its purpose rather than content or tradition. Can you talk more about that?

Professor Katherine Jenkins (16:38)

Yeah, I guess. I think that we should acknowledge that feminist philosophy is not like one tradition. You know, we can recognise it happening in different countries, in different places, but people on different sides of the world who haven't read each other seem to be both doing something that counts as feminist philosophy. And I think that that fact is. I think if we denied that, we'd be denying the diversity of feminist philosophy, and I would have a real problem with that. But once you acknowledge that, then it becomes very difficult to see as a tradition. Because the nice thing about defining something as a tradition is that it does come with this fluidity built in. In that, you know, the views might change. It's not like feminist philosophers all accept the following list of propositions. It's like, well, they're kind of in contact. There's an overlapping chain. You know, Wittgenstein's idea of family resemblance. These kinds of things come to mind when you think about a tradition or a genealogy. But that just doesn't seem on the table, I think, for feminist philosophy, because we're. So at least my intuitions really are like that. You know, one can identify it in very different times and places with apparently no causal overlap or linkage in that way. So that's why I don't think it can be a tradition. Or at least maybe we would have to say it's a bundle of many traditions. Perhaps that might work, I'm not sure.

Morteza Hadjizadeh (17:59)

Earlier you talked about oppression, and that's an important topic when it comes to feminism.

Professor Katherine Jenkins (18:05)

Add a thought onto what I said.

Morteza Hadjizadeh (18:06)

Sure, sure.

Professor Katherine Jenkins (18:07)

I think that tradition can't, like, define feminist philosophy, like, give you, like, the contours of a thing, that it's singular thing that is feminist philosophy. But I just wanted to clarify. I'm not denying that there are traditions here. I think there are sort of genealogies, there are kind of practices that are shared, there are ways of thinking that are passed on between people. I think that's very important. And for me, philosophy in general is. Is a team sport, not something that we do kind of as isolated individuals. And I think the history of feminist philosophy really exhibits that as I think many other types of philosophy. So I just wanted to be clear. There is tradition in the mix here, for sure. I just don't think it gives us a definition.

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Morteza Hadjizadeh (19:20)

Thanks for that. And I love the idea of philosophy being as a teamwork. Yeah. Let's talk about the idea of oppression. And you quote Marilyn Fry, that when it comes to oppression, oppression of women, it's important to understand it as a structural phenomenon, to be able to have that better and more complex and nuanced understanding. How can we move, let's say, from a common understanding of oppression, which is usually, in common parlance, it's usually individual, related to one's individual situation. But talking about it as a structural phenomenon, how does it help us to better be able to address. To address women's oppression in this sense?

Professor Katherine Jenkins (20:04)

Yeah.

Morteza Hadjizadeh (20:05)

Good.

Professor Katherine Jenkins (20:05)

So this is drawing on a classic paper by Marilyn Fry, just called Oppression. It's from the 70s and it's taught. I mean, it's one of the first. It's the first reading when I teach a kind of course on philosophy of gender. Among other things. It's. And it's a real cornerstone of feminist thought, and it's very much taught. And I recommend it. It's easily findable on the Internet. And I do recommend it as kind of a further thing to read, if you like the book or you like the sound of the book. And she's interested in the idea of, like, look, we need to be careful not to cheapen the word oppression. It's not the case that every time someone has a bad time, they're oppressed. It's possible to be miserable. It's possible to be disadvantaged. It's possible for things to not go your way and for that not really to be appropriately termed oppression. At the same time, I think she doesn't want oppression to be something that's like, very narrow and legalistic. So you're only oppressed if the law says that you can't vote or something like this. And so what's in the middle is this idea of a structural Phenomenon that, as she puts it, kind of confines and molds and immobilises a certain group. So it's about limiting the possibilities for that group in a way that's not just in one particular respect, that's more holistic. And she has this beautiful metaphor, which I think I talk about in the book, of a birdcage. So she says if you have a birdcage, if you look at it one wire at the time, it will be really confusing or unclear why the bird doesn't fly away. Because the bird could fly over the wire or under it, or to the left or to the right. It's only once you have all the wires together and you see the way that they interlock, that you see how for any direction the bird might try to go, there'll be a wire that stops them. So with gender oppression, this might be things like a woman wanting to leave an abusive relationship, encountering kind of payment discrimination or employment discrimination. That means that she's going to have a really financially difficult time sustaining herself outside of that relationship. Or maybe there's a child in the mix and childcare is not available or is prohibitively expensive. So it's like, oh, just do this. Well, actually, there's a problem there. Well, oh, just get a child. Mind it. Well, actually, you can't afford it or it's not available and you're not. Don't have good entitlements under the law. Right. So there's this kind of holistic aspect to why are somebody's options constrained? You have to look at all the different directions they might move and the different ways they might try and alleviate issues before you see how many avenues there are foreclosed. So I think it's a powerful metaphor. It's one I, you know, when I teach this paper as well, you know, it's from the 70s, many things have changed. Like, she kind of. Some of the ways in which she talks about the limitations women face in employment, for example, have really changed. There has been real change since she wrote it, and yet I still find it relevant. And when I teach it, I feel like students or. It seems to me that students find examples from their own lives. And that idea is not for all of them. They all have their different views. But for many students, it seems like that metaphor is vivid and that idea of avenues being foreclosed by different kinds of barriers that nevertheless lock together to form a structure that's very immobilizing and speaks to people. So I think I'm pretty fond of this way of thinking about oppression. I think you can add to it and extend it, and people have and do. But by and large, I think there's a helpful insight there.

Morteza Hadjizadeh (23:22)

You're right. And I really love that example of a woman being stuck in a toxic relationship with an abusive partner. And to me, I think it was a couple of years ago. So I live in Australia and I guess like many other parts of the Western world, there's this cost of living crisis, you know, things like that. But then I read that the divorce rate has decreased. Not necessarily. Not necessarily divorce, but there are a lot of women who cannot get out of the relationship.

Professor Katherine Jenkins (23:50)

Yes.

Morteza Hadjizadeh (23:50)

Because of the newly imposed cost of living and mortgage interest rates being high. Now they just have to stay in that abusive relationship. So it's related to economy. But whereas as you mentioned, if an outsider might say, well, just, just leave, but it's not as simple as that.

Professor Katherine Jenkins (24:07)

It's not as simple as that. And that's a really good phrase here. I think a lot of this kind of birdcage metaphor is a good way of thinking of it is as a counter to the. As a way of expressing that thought that it's not as simple as that. And this, I think relates to something you said earlier about the range of issues that feminist philosophy has kind of turned out to be relevant to. I think, in my view, genuinely relevant too. So things like the environment or so many of these things differentially impact women because they feature in this set of this interlocking collection of barriers, because they can be reasons why something isn't as simple as that. And you mentioned the economy and the kind of differential impacts of cuts to public services impact women on average or statistically in the aggregate more than men. Because women are more likely to be relying on those services. Why? Well, in large part because of social norms that make women responsible for things like childcare and the care of elderly people and things like that.

Morteza Hadjizadeh (25:08)

Yeah. And just want to follow up that question with this kind of more nuanced understanding of oppression. I'm keen to know how we might use Marilyn Fry's concept in order to be able to build solidarity not only across feminist movement, but also other progressive movements. How can we use that concept to bring other progressive movements closer to one another?

Professor Katherine Jenkins (25:33)

Great question. Two thoughts on that, I guess. Firstly, I think that it's true that Fry thinks that oppression is group based. So it's the kind of. In the metaphor, the occupant of the cage is not each individual woman. It's like women as a group perhaps, is one way you can understand it. So there is a kind of group based element to this. But I think that focusing on shared oppression rather than a kind of more basic or intrinsic shared group status is kind of practically helpful. I think it's harder to get dragged into trans exclusionary politics. For example, if you focus on the extent to which the ways that trans women are oppressed and the ways that CIS women are oppressed are like the same ways, you know, for example, things like high rates of sexual violence against trans women. You can think of of restrictions in access to transition related healthcare and restrictions to abortion, both under the framework of bodily autonomy. So I think thinking about shared oppression rather than a kind of prior shared group status, it can be a helpful protective against some directions of thinking that I think are unhelpful and oppressive in themselves. I also think that in terms of. So it helps orient you away from a kind of like anxious boundary market and towards shared oppression. That's helpful. And then in terms of more like intersectionality, I think the metaphor and the theory of oppression needs to be supplemented with an understanding of intersectionality. The ways in which one is never oppressed simply as a member of one category. It's always one's experience is always a function of one's kind of total situation. In terms of kind of gender and race would be a kind of classic example or gender and class. You know, the example we talked about is going to look different for a working class woman than for a woman who's more economically privileged. And it's not like we can be like, well, let's just think about gender angle of the oppression over here and the class angle over there. Let's keep them tidy and separate. That's not just impractical, that's conceptually impossible, I think is the thought, and it's a thought that I agree with. So when it comes to thinking about that, I think the metaphor of oppression, you know, the metaphor of the birdcage maybe breaks down because that would suggest that there are like all these different birdcages sitting in a row. And that's not, we know that's not accurate, but I think the idea that, you know, one and the same barrier can feature in a number of different, different structures. So like the cuts to public services also impacting working class people, people of color and women to a greater extent. There's a sense in which, like that sort of one kind of bar of a cage, if you will, if we can kind of isolate it as a bar that's featuring in many different kind of cages and That's a great way of focusing solidarity, right? To say that, well, this barrier features in a bunch of different structures that oppress different groups that can't really be disentangled in the way that that language suggests. But it's hard to kind of get around how to kind of put that better. But we can all benefit from taking this barrier away. So let's focus energy on this from different directions. I think that that is helpful for coalition building. So you're going to have to be careful with the metaphor because I think it doesn't really do justice to the idea of intersectionality. But I think the way of thinking about oppression that Fry offers is one that in at least this respect that I've tried to outline does lend itself to a sort of coalitional approach to activism.

Morteza Hadjizadeh (29:06)

You're right. Finally, a couple of weeks ago, I was doing another podcast with someone about. It was about book called Male Complaint. It was about manospheres and things. And then in Australia a couple of weeks or two, three or four weeks ago, there was a march for Australia which was an anti immigration march. And I listened to some of the interviews and then, and I said, well, I have a lot in common with these people, but it's just that they are targeting a specific group of people who are not responsible for the issues that they are raising. So that just highlights the fact that, yeah, it's all that anger is misdirected. They are not the culprit. The groups you're focusing is not the culprit. As a matter of fact, if we talk to those groups, they have the same issues as you and there's someone else that you need to blame or you need to be protesting against.

Professor Katherine Jenkins (29:50)

Yeah, absolutely. And on that, if I may, I think that feminism has a particularly interesting and maybe challenging relationship to the kinds of sort of broadly kind of right wing populist kind of movements that you're alluding to there, I take it, because there's a really pervasive and in the UK at the moment, very prominent rhetoric of protecting women and children. So for example, the idea that we need to deport migrants because they pose a threat to the physical safety of women and children. Oh, it obviously is not a provable thing. That's not accurate, that's not empirical information that we have like this does not bear that out at all. However, it's a very powerful idea and I think that feminists and you see something similar in anti trans movements and I think that feminists need to be very aware of this because there are real Threats. Threats to women. I'm going to leave aside the women and children thing. I think that's complicated, but I think there are real vulnerabilities that women as an oppressed group, in my view, not defined by biology, but whatever, like as an oppressed group. I think that's true. But given the history and given the ideologies that are around anytime someone claims to be coming in and acting to protect women, I just think you need to be really suspicious of that. I just think you need to ask a lot of questions when you hear that. And I think that we need to, to as feminists kind of be responsible for. Yeah. Fact checking those kinds of claims about what's women's interests as a, as a group that does have some particular vulnerabilities, but I think isn't defined by vulnerabilities, although some actors would like us to be.

Morteza Hadjizadeh (31:29)

It's quite interesting you mentioned, I was reminded of like 10 years ago, I think it was 2015 or 16, if I'm not mistaken, which when there was this wave of immigrants from, I mean war refugees actually from Syria and other countries to Europe, Germany and then it was like we were back in the 18th century in terms of how women were portrayed. So women were again reported as a vulnerable territory country. Europe is. So the depiction of Europe was a woman who was being invaded or raped. All the kind of cliches that you had used to have, you know, a century ago, but they all came back. I'm going to ask you about that a little bit further towards the end of the interview. I'm keen to know your thoughts on this new phenomenon. You know, as you mentioned, lot of right wing groups and how they hijacked the idea of the discussions about family women. And you know, we also have this new phenomenon, trad women, which is more or less, I guess an American thing.

Professor Katherine Jenkins (32:23)

Oh, like trad wives.

Morteza Hadjizadeh (32:24)

Yeah.

Professor Katherine Jenkins (32:25)

I've learned about this through my teaching. I'm not very online, but when I, when talking about like teaching kind of feminist philosophy students are very keen to talk about trad wives. I've been fighting, they sent me links and I've been looking. It's quite fascinating.

Morteza Hadjizadeh (32:37)

It is, it's. And they have like some influences in the US I checked one of them, she had a lot of followers. Yeah, she was baking cookies, baking cake, looking after three or four kids, living in a huge house. Of course she didn't have to work because she had a rich husband. And there is a lot of animosity towards whatever that means. Liberal women who get College education, want to be independent. But anyway, we'll talk about that towards the end of the interview, you. Let's go back to the idea of woman. I know it's difficult to define. I'm not going to ask you because I'm against coming up with a restrictive definition. And this question is a bit specific and I don't expect to go into details, but maybe you could give our listeners a broad understanding of when you discuss challenges that are affiliated with defining women. And you do take a few philosophical perspectives to discuss this. Gender realism, gender skepticism and gender nominalism. So, like I said, I don't want you to go into that, but can you talk about what are the challenges in defining woman as a social category?

Professor Katherine Jenkins (33:43)

Well, I think that what I said before, that there seem to be different ways to approach it, and then each approach has its own difficulties. So gender realism, broadly speaking, is the idea that there is something that women have in common in virtue of which they're women, women. And the most popular option for what that thing is in the literature has been some kind of social situation, a social position being subject to certain norms and expectations, for example. But the norms and expectations facing women or associated with womanhood in different times and places and cultures and for women of different classes and races and sexualities and all these kinds of things, they're very different. So the search for the thing that ties women together, which the real realist into a certain. There are complex ways to kind of. There are some sophisticated ways to get to nuance that. But the basic issue there is that that search is quite difficult, but the realist is committed to finding something. And then there are some kind of different angles you can come at that. There are some creative solutions to that, and I'm quite drawn to some of them. But that's what's happening there. On the kind of the other hand, gender scepticism would be like, give up. There is no such thing as the category of women woman. That leaves you with some questions about what feminist philosophy is or what feminist politics is and what it's for and what it's doing. Again, there are creative responses to that, but that's your kind of challenge there. And nominalism in the middle maybe not going to do justice to this quickly, but is the idea that there's something that we can meaningfully talk about the category of women, but there's not like a deep similarity underlying that. It's kind of nominal. It's like just the name. And I think there's some challenges around. Exactly. You still have to kind of get that name. So you still have to kind of say something about what that means, and that might be challenging. And also, are you left with something that feels like a. Or that seems to be a sufficiently weighty kind of groundwork on which to base feminist politics? And then, of course, you have the idea that that's all perhaps a bit of a red herring and that feminist politics isn't so closely connected with the idea of woman after all. But I suppose if there's something that those challenges have in common, it's the idea that who are the women? In the context of feminist theory and feminist philosophy is a question that has been closely tied to the idea of, like, what is feminist philosophy? What is feminism? What are we doing? And that lends it certain kinds of urgencies and makes certain kinds of complications for different sorts of answers that you might want to give. So that's what I try and take people through in chapter two, I guess, the second half of chapter two of the book, which was a difficult bit to write because it's what I work on. So I wanted to say a bit more, but I was very excited to kind of give a sketch and then kind of move on to the issues in chapter three and four, where I talk about what is a feminist issue and whether the personal is political, which I wanted to say a little bit about how I came up with those chapters, actually, if that's okay, because you said that you like titles. As I was thinking at the time, I'm really pleased to hear you like the titles, because I spent a long time thinking about them, and I. And at one point, because the books, they're so little. They're really short. There's like 30,000 words. So I had to be really concise. And initially I thought, oh, I'll do like, a chapter on feminist epistemology and a chapter on feminist metaphysics, and I'll go through area by area of philosophy. But there were just way too many areas to do that with. So I was like, okay, they're going to have to be telescoped. And what I came to think and came to use as an organizing principle for a couple of the chapters is that there are two moves that I think feminist philosophers often find themselves making to other philosophers. One is a move that's associated with the idea of the personals political, which is like, hey, there's this thing that you've dismissed as not philosophically interesting and not politically interesting, like norms of appearance from a perspective rooted in women's experiences, that is philosophically Interesting. That is important. That is worthy of investigation. So like, hey, notice that there's stuff to be said over here. So that's one. And then the other move is more associated with what's a feminist issue and is more like, hey, you're all talking about the environment or you're all talking about the economy, but maybe you haven't realized that there's a gender dimension that's being overlooked here. So hey, gender is relevant to the thing you're already talking about. You know, that's an issue here, here, but you don't know it's a gender issue here. And so those were two kind of moves that I felt like feminists were often dialectically in the position of making. And so I thought that might be a fun way to split down the chapters. So that's what the personal is. Political is about the first of those and a selection of issues that I think have that shape. And then the one about what's a feminist issue is about the second one. And issues that kind of have that shape of having to be like. I think you'll find that gender is, is, is doing something here.

Morteza Hadjizadeh (38:30)

Yeah, that's what went.

Professor Katherine Jenkins (38:34)

Here.

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Professor Katherine Jenkins (38:50)

Is that guy with the binoculars watching us.

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Professor Katherine Jenkins (39:01)

Excludes Massachusetts.

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Professor Katherine Jenkins (39:15)

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Professor Katherine Jenkins (39:31)

Let's go.

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Morteza Hadjizadeh (39:47)

And I quite like this picture that I'm on page 72 of the book. So I hope that our listeners can just pick up the book and read it. Yeah. And I'm kind of embarrassed to say that I was completely unaware of this. Like 15 years ago. I was more or less born in a traditional family. My dad was a shopkeeper, my mom was a housewife. And so my dad was the breadwinner. But then when I think of it without my mom, and now that I have a family, I have a wife, I have a newborn kid. Especially now that I have a newborn kid, I'm just thinking, thinking, how the heck did my mom raise four kids? And we were born. I'm originally from Iran. I was born in the middle of Iran and Iraq war. I'm just thinking. And my brothers, my other two brothers as well. My sister was born one year before the war ended. But then I'm saying, how did she raise four kids during war? I'm sure my dad worked hard as well, but I can't even imagine. And my brother was. My younger brother was. Was born 10 or 11 months after me. So basically my mom had two young kids, very young kids. Can't even imagine how without her my dad wouldn't be able to survive, wouldn't be able to run his business. And that's an aspect of domestic labor a lot of people ignore.

Professor Katherine Jenkins (41:07)

Yes, yes. And it was really fun writing about that. And so writing about the strand of kind of socialist feminist thinking that sees a lot of value in Marxist understandings of exploitation and economy and so on, but. But feel takes the view and makes the argument that the contributions of women to the economy have been. Because they're not necessarily taking place in the. In the paid workplace, that they don't count, that they're not considered labor in that picture and wanting to kind of put women into that picture. So the image in the book that it's got one picture in. I don't usually have pictures of my philosophy books, but it has pictures. It's this screen print by. It's by Red Women's Workshop. And it's this image where you've got like a production line where men are coming out of a factory and women are kind of like soothing them and making their lunch and ironing their shirts. And then they're kind of sent back into the factory and the middle. The text says capitalism also depends on domestic labor. And I just thought it was a real kind of picture. Paints a thousand words. You could find it online if you Google ism. Also depends on domestic labor. Or records. Workshops. Workshop. And it's so evocative. And I think it's one of those things that when you see it, you're like, oh, yeah, how could you not see that? But this discourse of, like, oh, I don't. I don't work. I'm just a housewife. Work really hard. If you're a person who is in the. Is in the home, keeping the home and caring for people in the home, like, that's really hard work. And I think it's something we need to think about. And when I teach these. So one thought at a certain point has been that women, or I guess at that time, women, but maybe anybody who does that role should be paid a wage by the state. So wages for housework. And I was a bit nervous when I started teaching that because it feels, in a way, a bit dated. I think it's related to things like universal basic income that are current political demands. But I was a bit worried that students would be like, why are we talking about this thing from quite some decades ago? And that seems maybe a bit unworkable, but actually not so. I found that making vivid that contribution and the way it's made invisible through various tactics has really kind of tends to catch people's interest. And so I was really, as soon as I knew I was writing the book, I knew I'd be talking about that. And so I'm glad that you enjoyed that. And I think one of the reasons it does stay invisible, that contribution that so many women make and that you were talking about your mum making, is Silvia Federici describes this kind of ideology of housewifery, this idea that the figure of the housewife life, you know, as this sort of being with this kind of nurturing essence who just sort of spontaneously emanates like hot dinners and clean nappies and iron shirts as a kind of expression of her femininity. Right. I think that's a very powerful controlling image. I think that ideology that it, like, it comes from love, it comes from womanliness. It happens almost by magic, not by, like, hard work is. I think that has a powerful hold. And I think it's related to what you were saying earlier about the kind of tradwife thing, Right. Like in those cases, especially a very curated and constructed social media, like packages of media, where there may be like, teams of people behind the scenes doing the makeup and the hair and the, you know, the auxiliary childcare and stuff. I think that's a really stark illustration of the. What kind of underpins that mystique and how contrived and kind of unrealistic that mystique really is. But I think that's doing a lot of work here.

Morteza Hadjizadeh (44:31)

I just wanted to mention one more point. When I was reading the book, especially when I came across that picture in the book, I was reminded of the famous John Ford movie, How Green Was My Valley. Don't know if you've seen the movie or not. So it's early 20th century before. Or maybe I don't remember exactly the date when the movie is set, actually. But it's all about all this man who's kind of a patriarch, and his boys, who are very young. They all go to the mine. They work in the mines in England. And it's really difficult work. But when they come back home, they're all greasy and dirty. But it's the mom there washes them, washes their shirts. Then she has always set the table. And then they give the money, the money that they have made on that. They give it to the man and the boys, give it to the woman of the family, the mother, and she keeps the money, but she gives them a little bit to the boys to go in a pub, have fun. But she's the one who's actually keeping this whole family together. But she's not working there. Yeah.

Professor Katherine Jenkins (45:29)

And speaking of, she is working, just not for.

Morteza Hadjizadeh (45:31)

You're right, yeah.

Professor Katherine Jenkins (45:33)

Wage. Yes, exactly.

Morteza Hadjizadeh (45:34)

Yeah. And there was this new book that came out, I think, Wages, Wages for Our Work, the Story of a Movement. I haven't read it yet, but it's exactly about this movement.

Professor Katherine Jenkins (45:44)

Yeah, I haven't read it either. I would like to. I think that there's a resurgence of. Of. I think that the wages for housework, as I see it as a movement happening kind of, I guess, in the sort of 70s and 80s, predominantly, if I remember rightly, was an attempt to resolve a really deep contradiction. And I think we just haven't really resolved that. People wanted to resolve it in different ways. Like in the book, I talk about Angela Davis, who has a very different take on this. She kind of points out that black women in the US Especially have for a long time received a wage for housework because they go and do housework in other people's houses and get paid for it. But by and large, they get paid very badly. And it doesn't lead to social respect. So the idea that you can solve this by the thought would be maybe, you know, by giving something a wage, it elevates it. It makes it visible as work. It's the first step and being able to kind of, you know, refuse to do it. If it's the thing that you're choosing to do as labor, you can withdraw your labor. If it's just an aspect of your innate feminine essence. It's not really clear how you could like turn that off. But Davis doesn't buy that because she says that, well, yeah, black women have been receiving a wage for doing housework in other people's houses and it hasn't had the kinds of good effects, effects that are being posited. What she wants to see is the socialization of houseworks. She wants to see, she talks about teams of highly trained and well paid and well equipped workers going door to door being like, hey, we're here to hoover your entire house or we're here to clean everything or neighborhood canteens doing cheap meals and creches and stuff. So she wants to kind of collectivize. She says basically housework is in her view, like kind of rubbish, unrewarding work by and large that no one should have to. Men or women or people of any gender shouldn't have to spend more of their time doing it than is absolutely necessary. And I think that resonates with some thoughts you might have now about what technology can do here. So there were a diversity of suggestions for addressing this tension, this denial, this burying of that labour. And I talk about several in the book but what I definitely think is that none of them got acted on and we've just been left with this contradiction. So I'm not surprised to see that these ideas are kind of, of still speak to people are being, you know, being still attended to and being explored and proposals being made. There's an unresolved contradiction here. I don't know if it's a contradiction that could ever be resolved without absolutely massive social change. You might think that this is really just foundational to our economic models so you can't kind of tweak it away. But be that as it may, I think this is. Yeah, I think this remains unresolved and I think I'm really glad that people are still thinking about it and, and coming up with ideas and looking back to that history for inspiration. Even if it might need to take different forms nowadays.

Morteza Hadjizadeh (48:23)

But I guess as you mentioned, we need that kind of idealistic thinking, imaginative politics because I'm lucky because in Australia that where I live there is this universal healthcare. So the quality has been like in England, the quality has been declining of course, but still it's an integral part of, of this society. And people in Australia cannot think of their healthcare system without that Universal healthcare program here that is in place and it's doable because people came together, they came up with a wonderful plan. Yeah, people paid their taxes, but it works. It works and it really, really helps.

Professor Katherine Jenkins (49:00)

Yeah.

Morteza Hadjizadeh (49:00)

And I'm sure it's something like they can be worked out.

Professor Katherine Jenkins (49:03)

Yes, I share that hope. Definitely share that hope. And of course, the National Health Service in the UK is very much under attack and under risk of, of privatization in various kind of different kinds of perhaps indirect or more direct ways. But yeah, I think that's a great example. And I think, you know, just to come back perhaps to this idea of like, what feminist philosophy can do, I think, you know, to live other than we have been used to living, it can help to be able to imagine living differently, you know, to imagine the idea of a National Health Service that's free at the point of use and paid for by taxes. For that to be brought into being, it had to be envisioned, it had to be thought about. And I don't want to over claim, I don't want to say that feminist philosophy is the kind of the torchbearer or the trailblazer or, you know, the most important thing. And everything else is just working out the details. I don't believe that. I think you work out what's possible through trying things. And it's all very connected, the philosophizing and the acting to try and change the world. I think for me, work best when they are in a kind of. Of interwoven and reciprocal relationship. But I do think that something that philosophizing as systematic and reasoned exploration of thorny conceptual issues, issues that are not amenable to being like, oh, we'll just get the economists to tell us the answer, or we'll just get the biologist to tell us the answer, and then science will kind of decide the issue. That's what I see philosophy as, right. It's the systematic exploration of those questions that resist being solved by other areas perhaps of human inquiry and investigation. I think that doing that in relation to feminist aims and feminist struggles can supply various things. And one of the things I think it can supply is that utopian thinking, that power to imagine otherwise and kind of pose those, well, what if, what if, what if it was different? Yeah. Not in the sense that you get like a roadmap and then you act on it, but in the sense that that thought kind of impels you to kind of look around the next corner as you go. And so it was really fun writing about feminist philosophy, especially at the time that we're in where I think gender oppression is worsening in some aspects in many places and is like linked to these other kinds, these kinds of very worrying social directions like the rise of the far right. So it felt, it felt hopeful in the end to think about feminist philosophy.

Morteza Hadjizadeh (51:33)

Now you sort of answered the last question I wanted to ask, but I will ask it in a different way maybe because I wanted to ask you about the role of philosophers which beautifully described and always ask the question about the future. I know it's difficult to explain and you rightly mentioned that because of the rise of more or less right wing politics everywhere, forms of oppression against women or against other minorities, such as everybody oppressed coming back. Yes, and unfortunately it has this so called, you know, veneer of science which is not really the case and it's done by the people who actually are climate deniers, but they stick to the science part of it when it comes to gender. But anyhow, and I more or less think it's an American thing, but it's, it's being exported to other parts of the world as well. How hopeful are you about. And there is a lot of resistance again as well against these kind of oppressions. But how do you see the next 10 or 15 years in terms of the possibilities or potentials of pushing back against these sorts of agendas?

Professor Katherine Jenkins (52:42)

I'm very worried. I think there's lots of room to push back. But I think that what we're seeing is a very scary global movement. I don't think it's all originated in the U. I know what you mean about the U.S. i don't think it's all originating in the U.S. there's some particular kinds of transphobia, for example, that I think the U.S. sorry, the United Kingdom has been a real petri dish for. I think that resistance is crucial and I think that you can't resist without hope. So I think in a way we need to decide to be hopeful because the alternative isn't really worth thinking about. I think that, that yeah, at a certain point you could have to just decide that you're not going to give up on hope rather than waiting for the world to give you active causes for optimism. That said, I do see causes for optimism. I think there is a growing awareness of the connectedness of issues. I think there is a growing commitment to the importance of solidarity. I think when you're looking at, I don't know, the attacks on trans people by authoritarian regimes, for many people, you don't need a detailed understanding of trans politics or a wide circle of trans friends, to see that for what it is, which is like a hideous assault on a very small group of the population who are being vilified and whose human rights are being violated rampantly. In a way, I think, you know, as everything becomes starker and more ugly, I think if we keep a clear sight on what's happening and who's being harmed and look at the facts on that, then I think it does point towards. I think it does highlight the crucial importance of solidarity, and I think a lot of people are seeing that, and I think we need to be creative, and I think we need to be grounded in our communities. I think understanding and the kinds of trust and solidarity you need for political action don't come from abstraction. They come from spending time with people, being in places, with people, including online, or forms of organizing. So I think that. I think I see the cause for hope in the bonds that are being forged, you know, across categories, across kind of what we might think of as, like, distinct social movements, and the intersectionality of it, really. I think the kind of nexus of oppressive ideologies that has coalesced is, I hope, going to prompt a responsive kind of coalescing among the people who want to stand up against oppression in all its forms. So I do think there are some real causes for hope there. But at the end of the day, I think we have to decide to be hopeful and to act from that hope, because I don't really know what else. I don't really know what else we can do.

Morteza Hadjizadeh (55:17)

You're right. What was the famous. I think it was a donor. Pessimism of intellect. Active. Ah, no. Optimism of will. I don't remember.

Professor Katherine Jenkins (55:26)

Yeah, I think I'm just. I'm just. That was. Sorry. That was a long winded way of saying, like, I think optimism of the will, but also optimism based on grassroots organizing and solidarity. Yeah.

Morteza Hadjizadeh (55:36)

I think it just reminded me of a wonderful example in England where, during the famous miners strike, it was LGBT communities who formed alliance with minors. They raised money for them. They. Light rays. It was a beautiful example of that grassroots solidarity and continuity building. Yeah.

Professor Katherine Jenkins (55:55)

And there's a lovely film about that. Pride.

Morteza Hadjizadeh (55:57)

Yes, you're right. I haven't seen the film yet, but I know which one it is.

Professor Katherine Jenkins (56:00)

And the film, I find it very heartwarming. It's not perfect, but I enjoy it personally. And, you know, that's been. Those ideas, I believe, have been kind of harked back, have been kind of picked up again. So you've got. With lesbians and Gays support the minors. And there is, I believe, an organization or there was at one time in the recent years, lesbians and gays support the migrants. So I think migrant solidarity is part of. And I think, you know, if you look at the. Yeah, the way that threats to women and children ideology is being mobilized against migrants. And I think, you know, resisting that. Resisting ideologies that would define women by biological vulnerability in ways that are, I think, ultimately oppressive. You know, the connections are there to be seen, and I think people are seeing them to at least some extent. And that, for me, is a cause of real hope. But, yeah, I love. That's exactly the kind of thing that I was thinking of. Yeah.

Morteza Hadjizadeh (56:50)

Great. Thank you very much for your time to speak with us. Professor Catherine Jenkins really, really enjoyed reading this book. Highly accessible and raises lots of questions. Gives people a lot of food for thought. I highly strong. I. I highly recommend this book to our listeners and viewers. Thank you so much for your time to speak with us.

Professor Katherine Jenkins (57:08)

Thank you for having me on. It's been such a pleasure. I'm so grateful. Thank you.