Sex Without Baptism, Amen

Professor Esther Rosario
Lecturer, Philosophy Department, Dartmouth College

This talk focuses on a case of conceptual engineering, the view that we can and should improve on the meanings of our concepts for practical and theoretical purposes. In particular, I’ll offer a new concept of sex, which I call the nonbaptismal sex concept. On this concept, sex is nothing over and above ranges of sex-based properties (i.e., genes, genitals, gonads, morphology, and hormones) and their malleable social designations. I contend that sex conferrals are legal-linguistic practices that typically serve the function of ‘baptizing’ (or introducing) persons into a ‘gender faith’ rather than tracking biological properties. The new concept is geared to eliminate notions of ‘baptism’ from sex for epistemic and social aims.