In various posts here at BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY and in various publications, including “Disaster Ableism, Epistemologies of Crisis, and the Mystique of Bioethics” (my chapter in The Bloomsbury Guide to Philosophy), I have identified and elaborated the ways in which a culture of eugenics circulates within and animates Canadian philosophy departments. Hiring and promotion practices, course offerings, and conference participation, as well as awards and accolades in Canadian philosophy are conditioned and ultimately determined in accordance with this apparatus of eugenics, an apparatus that continues to be instrumental to, and indeed require, the exclusion of disabled philosophers, especially disabled philosophers of disability. In short, to make it as a philosopher in Canada, including, or perhaps especially, a feminist philosopher, one must at least implicitly be a supporter of this eugenic culture, if not one of its explicit promoters.

As I have indicated in previous posts, feminists have long played a formative role in the social acceptance of some version of eugenics. From Ladies of the Invisible Empire whose racism, nationalism, and traditional morality bolstered the activities of the Ku Klux Klan; to Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, who argued that the proliferation of birth control would lead to the reduction of “unfit” people and thereby improve the “fitness” of the human race; and on to Jocelyn Downie, the leading proponent of MAiD in Canada, feminists have been integral to eugenic social projects. Some feminists regard such projects as inseparable from idea(l)s and sensibilities that, allegedly, are self-evidently feminist, including ideals such as health, ability, and autonomy, and sensibilities such as care and compassion.

Indeed, I would not have been surprised if I had read Downie’s name on the program of “Quel Féminisme Pour Le 21e Siècle? Genre, Diversité, et Décolonité,” the feminist philosophy conference that is taking place in Montréal this week. For the main organizer of the conference, Naïma Hamrouni, is a proponent of MAiD who, like some of the participants on the conference program, works in close association with Daniel Weinstock, an architect of MAiD policy in Canada, who also collaborates with other successful feminist philosophers in Canada.

Does, say, CUNY feminist philosopher Serene Khader, one of the featured feminist philosophers on the conference program, know that her involvement in this conference implicates her in the eugenic culture of Canadian philosophy? And if she did, would this implication be troubling enough to lead her to withdraw from the conference or at least express some misgivings about it to her audience? Disabled feminist philosophers of disability are keen to know.