Abstract: The ‘right to exclude’ is much-discussed in the political philosophy literature on immigration. Theorists argue that a nation has the right to self-determination, and that a significant part of self-determination is the freedom to associate (and to not associate) at will. Thus, it is up to nations whether and to what extend they admit would-be migrants. In pushing back against this claim, opponents tend to draw distinctions between groups of different kinds, from intimate associations like marriages, through expressive associations like religions, to political associations like nations. Intimate and expressive associations, they concede, may have the right to self-determination and so a right to exclude; but political associations do not. I draw on this discussion over immigration to assess two different claims made by gender critical feminists, first, that female people are entitled to female-only spaces (to the exclusion of all male people, regardless of gender identity), and second, that lesbians are entitled to lesbian-only spaces (to the exclusion of all male people, regardless of gender identity). I include under the broad category of ‘spaces’ both identity terms like ‘woman’, ‘female’, and ‘lesbian’, and also categories like women’s sports and women-only shortlists. The right to exclude premised upon national self-determination is undermined by a difficulty in specifying what the ‘self’ in ‘self-determination’ is supposed to be, but this difficult does not cross over to the category of ‘women’ or the category of ‘lesbian’, even though both terms are politically contested at present. I argue that for the same reasons some people think you cannot be racist against dominant racial groups, we should also think there is no problem in excluding members of dominant groups. Nations’ right to exclude is at its most controversial precisely because of the vulnerability of would-be migrants (e.g. refugees, ecological migrants, and economic migrants). But transwomen are not made vulnerable by exclusion from female-only spaces, in particular when there are third spaces available. So the two cases are not parallel. Women, and lesbians, have the right to exclude.
NB: Tea starts at 3pm
When | Wed Feb 27, 2019 4:30am – 6am Coordinated Universal Time |
Where | Muniment Room, University of Sydney (map) |