Are generics especially pernicious?

Abstract

In recent years, both within and outside philosophy, the idea has taken hold that generics play a special role in perpetuating social injustice. Sarah-Jane Leslie’s work, and Sally Haslanger’s building on it, have led to an increasingly widespread belief that the use of generic expressions plays a crucial role in passing on and shoring up racist and sexist beliefs and ideologies. I have started to hear feminists catching themselves using generic terms to describe social groups, and trying to rephrase their utterances at conferences, citing Haslanger’s and Leslie’s work as the reason. But, as I will explain here, I think we do not yet have good reason to think that we should single out generics about social groups out as peculiarly destructive, or that we should strive to eradicate them from our usage. Indeed, I think they continue to serve a very valuable purpose and we should not rush to condemn them. I view the current attention to generics as a mistake in the battle against prejudice. This is not because they pose no problems − they do pose problems (though I am not yet convinced about many of the problems claimed by Leslie and Haslanger). But so do many other closely related constructions. If we focus our energies on avoiding generics, substituting other phrases that we (wrongly) take to be innocuous, we will be making a serious error. Instead, we need to think much harder about how to confront many sorts of utterances which make reference to social groups.

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