As Sara Ahmed reminds us, a name can be a wall, a name can be a door. The names we use for public platforms signal not just who is present, but who is presumed to belong. Naming does not merely describe a space; it helps constitute it, shaping the conditions under which participation becomes imaginable or foreclosed. In the current climate, marked by escalating legislative and rhetorical attacks on Trans, Queer, immigrant, and ethnoracially marginalized communities, we are reminded of the kind of power that naming can have. To name, in this sense, is also to draw boundaries, sometimes visible, sometimes subtle, around who can recognize themselves as addressed. It is with this in mind that we have proposed to change the name of this blog from Women in Philosophy to Gender, Sexuality, and Women in Philosophy.
This change is not an attempt to dismiss the work that has gone into establishing and populating the blog. The work that has come before us has served to provide a solid foundation upon which we are able to build. This work was started in the Winter of 2018, when Adriel Trott was approached by the then chair of the Committee on the Status of Women (CSW) of the American Philosophical Association (APA) with the opportunity to take on the founding editorship of a new series, the CSW was sponsoring at the APA Blog with the title, Women in Philosophy. Together with the CSW, Trott proposed that the series would focus on three areas:
1) Issues facing women in the field of philosophy.
2) Issues philosophy could speak to affecting women in the world.
3) Women in the history of philosophy.
We began publishing posts every two weeks in Spring 2018. The CSW hosted a panel about blogging, on which Trott spoke at the 2019 Eastern APA. The blog has benefited from the labor and the insight of a number of editors, including: Adriel Trott (2018-2023); Julianna Oxley (2020-2022); Alida Liberman (2022-2025); Elisabeth Paquette (2023-present); and Shadi “Sophie” Heidarifar (2025-2026). With every new editor and invitation for blog contributors, we have sought to create a space for intellectual curiosity as it pertains to gender, sexuality, and ethnoracially marginalized communities, and to broaden and fortify our understanding of the call of this blog series. These original aims already point beyond any narrow or fixed understanding of “women,” gesturing toward a broader set of concerns about gender, power, and social structures. In this sense, the present change can be understood not as a departure from the blog’s founding vision, but as a continuation and clarification of it.
Given that philosophy prides itself on examining assumptions, one must examine the assumptions embedded in an understanding of Women in Philosophy. We are committed to interrogating this linguistic framing and reinscribing it within this very boundary. Drawing on Ahmed’s critique of “diversity work,” as the labor of pushing against institutional norms, our hope is that the renaming forces a philosophical confrontation with the fact that social categories are never neutral but carry histories, barriers, and hierarchies that need deliberate unmaking. Thus, this is not an attempt to dissolve the category of “women,” but to critically inhabit and expand it, attending to the ways it has been implicitly bounded and differentially lived. In doing so, we aim to hold open a space where categories can be both politically meaningful and philosophically scrutinized.
Additionally, it is our contention that the blog has already been doing work that far exceeds a narrower conception of gender. The blog already publishes work on a wide range of topics, including Trans identity in academic spaces, Queer readings of canonical texts, analyses of structural discrimination in hiring, and intersections of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, nationality, Indigeneity, socioeconomic class, and disability in philosophy. The contributors are as diverse in identity as in subject matter; many are Queer women, Trans women, women of Color, as well as women, Queer, and Trans scholars from the Global South whose scholarship doesn’t “fit” in a narrow, binary frame. In this respect, the name has lagged behind the practice, and the proposed change brings the two into closer alignment.
Furthermore, despite our attempts to ensure a broadly inclusive space, it was pointed out to us that we had yet to ensure a space for gender marginalized folks: there was not yet a space for Trans men, gender-queer, and non-binary folks to publish their work on the APA blog site. Potential contributors have told us the current name leaves them unsure if their work belongs. This suggests the absence is already felt by those whose work we most need to uplift. Such hesitation is not incidental; it reflects how signals of belonging operate at the level of naming and framing, shaping who feels invited to speak. Updating the title makes explicit what the content already shows: our scope is broader, richer, and more comprehensive than Women in Philosophy alone conveys.
The blog has served as a refuge and a platform for women in philosophy, a role we value deeply. But a refuge is only real if it is available to all women, to all genders, and ethnoracially marginalized folks. Spaces that implicitly exclude or “other” Trans women, Queer women, women of Color, and gender marginalized folks not only fail to protect those most vulnerable, but they can also unintentionally reinforce the very marginalization they aim to resist. An inclusive refuge requires not only openness in principle, but recognizability in practice, under which those at the margins can see themselves as genuinely addressed.
At the same time, this change is oriented not only toward reflecting what the blog has been, but toward shaping what it can become. We have sought to build these spaces collectively as well, in a manner that reflects the founding of the blog. We are grateful for the support and guidance from the APA committees on the State of Women and Gender (which underwent a name change in 2023) and the LGBTQ+ Committee. The new name retains Women in Philosophy to honor the history and symbolic resonance of the series, while making its inclusivity explicit. It affirms that “women” here is capacious, encompassing a spectrum of gender identities, sexualities, ethnoracialized experiences, scholarly perspectives, and names a desire to move beyond it. It signals to readers and contributors alike that this is a space where, to echo Ahmed again, we can meet in our differences, without those differences being turned into distances. Changing a name is not simply a matter of branding. It is a philosophical claim, an academic commitment, a political stance, and an inclusive gesture. In renaming the series Gender, Sexuality, and Women in Philosophy, we are not discarding its legacy but ensuring it lives up to it. We especially welcome contributions that push at the boundaries of these categories, bringing into view voices, experiences, and methods that have too often remained peripheral. And we hope you will continue on this path with us.
The Gender, Sexuality, and Women in Philosophy series publishes posts on those excluded in the history of philosophy on the basis of gender, gender identity, and sexuality, issues of gender and sexuality injustice in the field of philosophy, and issues of gender and sexuality injustice in the wider world that philosophy can be useful in addressing. If you are interested in writing for the series, please contact the Series Editor Elisabeth Paquette or the Associate Editor Shadi “Soph” Heidarifar.
Shadi "Soph" Heidarifar
Shadi "Sophie" Heidarifar is an Assistant Professor in Roseman University College of Medicine. Her area of research includes bioethics, AI ethics, and philosophy of mind through a non-ideal/feminist lens.
Elisabeth Paquette is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Global Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. She works at the intersection of social and political philosophy, feminist philosophy, queer theory, and decolonial theory. Her book, Universal Emancipation: Race beyond Badiou (University of Minnesota Press, 2020), engages French political theorist Alain Badiou’s discussion of Négritude and the Haitian Revolution to develop a nuanced critique of his theory of emancipation. She is also the Assistant Director of philoSOPHIA: A Society for Transcontinental Feminism, co-director of The Kristeva Circle, Series Editor of the American Philosophical Associations Women in Philosophy Blog, co-editor of the journal Feminist Philosophy Quarterly, and the founder and director of A Feminist Decolonial Politics Workshop.
