68 research outputs found
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Rather than extend civil partnerships to all, the state should revoke perks for coupledom
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PPE may protect us, but it harms the sweatshop workers who make it
One of the greatest controversies of the UK coronavirus crisis is the shortage of PPE for NHS workers. Yet most PPE is made in sweatshops, and its production endangers the health of those who make it. Ironically, workers who produce personal protective equipment for others invariably have inadequate protection themselves
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Beyond orientalism: exploring the distinctive feminism of democratic confederalism in Rojava
Women have been central to the revolution in Rojava, leading to widespread interest in the Kurdish women’s movement across Western contexts. Yet Western mass media representations of women combatants tend to be objectifying and superficial, glossing over the unique variety of feminism, known as “jineology,” that is core to the political system of Rojava, which operates according to the ideology of “democratic confederalism.” This paper is intended as a corrective to the inadequate representation of the theory and praxis of the women’s movement in Rojava. It approaches this task by: (a) critiquing the popular representation of women in Rojava, and (b) providing an overview of some of the features of the distinctive feminism that are in operation, with a focus on intersectionality, autonomous spaces, and combatting masculinity
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Toward responsible ejaculations: the moral imperative for male contraceptive responsibility
In this paper, I argue that men should take primary responsibility for protecting against pregnancy. Male long-acting reversible contraceptives are currently in development, and, once approved, should be used as the standard method for avoiding pregnancy. Since women assume the risk of pregnancy when they engage in penis-in-vagina sex, men should do their utmost to ensure that their ejaculations are responsible, otherwise women shoulder a double burden of pregnancy risk plus contraceptive burden. Changing the expectations regarding responsibility for contraception would render penis-in-vagina sex more equitable, and could lead to a shift in the discourse around abortion access. I describe the sex-asymmetries of contraceptive responsibility and of the risks associated with pregnancy, and offer arguments in favour of men taking primary responsibility for contraception. My arguments centre on (a) analogies between contraception and vaccination, and unwanted pregnancy and disease; (b) a veil-of-ignorance approach, in which I contend that if a person were not told their sex, they would find a society in which men were expected to acquire and use effective contraceptives the fairest arrangement for everyone
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Abortion is nothing like hiring a hitman, whatever Pope Francis says
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Female genital alteration in the UK: a failure of pluralism and intersectionality
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“Women’s empowerment,” imperialism, and the global gag rule
The Global Gag Rule has restricted access to reproductive health services across the Global South for over three decades. In 2017, Trump dramatically expanded the policy, further reducing the number of women with access to safe abortions. In this paper, I argue that Global North economic policies have left Global South people dependent on aid in order to meet their basic health needs. I show that the effects of inadequate access to healthcare and aid dependence are gender-differential in two ways. First, as primary care-givers, women are required to perform additional unpaid care-work when health services are inadequate. Second, women’s access to sexual and reproductive health services become vulnerable to the moral and political whims of foreign powers. These marginalising forces operate against the backdrop of “women’s empowerment” aid discourses which are wilfully imperceptive to this context. Global North economic policies have disempowered Global South women, and the Global Gag Rule imperils their bodily autonomy. The effect is a form of imperialism which must be resisted
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Particles do not conspire
The aim of this paper is to debunk the assertion that miraculous “conspiracies” between fundamental particles are required to bring about the projectibility of special science generalisations. Albert and Loewer have proposed a theory of lawhood which supplements the Best System of fundamental laws with a statistical postulate over the initial conditions of the universe, thereby rendering special science generalisations highly probable, and dispelling the conspiracy. However, concerns have been raised about its ability to confer typicality upon special science generalisations in the way that is required. In this paper I defend their account against these charges, arguing that they derive from a misunderstanding of the typicality claim. I suggest a way out of the impasse via a naturalised approach which focusses on the genealogy of subsystems and encourages conceptual demonstrations of typicality for special science generalisations. I argue for an account of special-science laws that acknowledges the way in which the special sciences reduce to the fundamental physics, thereby dissolving the conspiracy, yet respects the methodological and explanatory autonomy of special science generalisations
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Austerity or xenophobia? The causes and costs of the hostile environment in the NHS
During the “age of austerity” the UK government has progressively limited free health services for “overseas visitors” on the grounds of fairness and frugality. This is despite the fact that the cost of the additional bureaucracy required by the new system and the public health consequences are expected to exceed the sums saved. In this article I explore the interaction between the austerity discourse and xenophobic discourses as they relate to migrants’ access to healthcare. By examining the available data and adjudicating various moral arguments, I cast doubt on the claim that the current charging regulations are cost-effective and fair. I instead contend that if the UK is concerned with running a health service that is economically-sustainable and morally-defensible, it is critical that migrants are welcomed, both as staff and as patients. I conclude by arguing that xenophobia has precipitated changes to the health service which do not qualify as “austerity” in the way that is claimed, but rather deliberately produce a “hostile environment” for migrants, despite this very likely generating economic losses
Health-worker migration and migrant health-care: seeking cosmopolitanism in the NHS
The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) is critically reliant on staff from overseas, which means that a sizeable number of UK healthcare professionals have received their training at the cost of other states which are themselves urgently in need of healthcare professionals. At the same time, while healthcare is widely seen as a primary good, many migrants are unable to access the NHS without charge, and anti-immigration political trends are likely to further reduce that access. Both of these topics have received close attention in the global health ethics literature. In this paper I make the novel move of suggesting that these two seemingly disparate issues should be folded into the same moral narrative. The “brain drain” upon which the NHS and its users depend derives from the same gradient of wealth, security, and opportunity that produces migrants who require the NHS. I endorse cosmopolitanism as an ethical lens for supporting access to healthcare for migrants, and argue that the NHS in its current formulation effectively enacts a partial cosmopolitanism in its reliance on medical workers from abroad, but could more meaningfully instantiate that cosmopolitanism were it to offer the same healthcare to migrants as it does to citizens
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