*I want to thank Meghan Schrader and Neil Levy for commenting on earlier drafts of this post. Neil Levy recently published an interesting take on impostor syndrome, explaining why it’s so common. He says that “pretense is an unavoidable element of coming to occupy a professional role.” So, in a sense, we’re all faking it. I […]
Transhumanism is Eugenics for Educated White Liberals
Transhumanism as “newgenics” Vice just published an article on how “prominent AI philosopher and ‘father’ of longtermism,” Nick Bostrom, “sent very racist email to a 90s philosophy listserv.” Bostrom “said that ‘Blacks are more stupid than whites,’ adding, ‘I like that sentence and think it is true,’ and used a racial slur.” The article mentions that the […]
Happy New Year! Is 2023 the Year for Non-linear Time?
Kinship Time I’ve been seeing a lot of progress reports on social media. In light of this, let me remind you that linear time is a social construct. You do not need to live up to a productivity schedule that follows a linear timeline. Indigenous philosopher Kyle Whyte of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation writes that […]
How Medico-capitalism Fuels Over-diagnosis and Over-medication
I’m surprised that there’s controversy over the claim that people are over-diagnosed and over-medicated in a laissez-faire capitalist society. The medical establishment is part of a capitalist order that classifies and commodifies everything for profit, including human emotions and behaviours. Capitalism also suppresses dissent and resistance in order to maximise profit at the expense of […]
Beautyism as Ableist Eugenics… and the Mystique of “Choice Feminism”
Introduction I recently came across this article on Vice.com asking filmmakers to “stop making hot actors play normal people.” The author indicts filmmakers for casting too few “normal” people. I think that this is a much-needed critique, but it lacks philosophical nuance, which I intend to provide here. My analysis will explore the harms of mainstream beauty […]
Nondisabled People Always Win the “Hunger Games” of Academic Publishing and Tenure
This year, only one department lists “disability studies” amongst its desired areas of specialization; namely, California Polytechnic State University’s AOS is “Technology Ethics, as related to Feminist Ethics and/or Disability Studies.” No department is looking for a specialist in critical disability theory or crip theory. Based on a keyword search, the word “disability” appears in […]
The Tragedy of Nondisability: A Sad and Boring Life
1. Introduction Philosophers tend to focus on the ‘tragedy of disability,’ the oppressions and exclusions faced by disabled people. There is good reason for this, inasmuch as disabled people must deal with systemic bullying, harassment, and discrimination. But if this is the only story that we tell about disability, then we are missing a big part of […]
Online Symposium on An Intersectional Feminist Theory of Moral Responsibility 
Readers of BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY may be interested in the online symposium of my book, An Intersectional Feminist Theory of Moral Responsibility. This week’s exchange between me and fellow disabled philosopher Sofia Jeppsson focuses on the relationship between responsibility, disability, and oppression. What follows is a brief summary of my book by Ryan Lake, followed by highlights of my conversation with […]
Academic Gatekeeping Is Killing Me
“In graduate school the classroom became a place I hated, yet a place where I struggled to claim and maintain the right to be an independent thinker. The university and the classroom began to feel more like a prison, a place of punishment and confinement rather than a place of promise and possibility” (bell hooks, Teaching […]
Philosophy Has a Body-shaming Problem
1. “Diet Culture is Unhealthy. It’s Also Immoral.” In a recent New York Times article, Kate Manne pointed out that philosophy has a body-shaming problem. She focused on fat-shaming, but one can extend her arguments to disability-shaming. Just as fat bodies are stigmatized, disciplined, and marginalized in philosophy, so are disabled bodies. Indeed, many of Manne’s claims […]
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