A Buddhist Account of Misgendering

This paper illustrates one way in which premodern Buddhist philosophy can be brought to bear on pressing socio-political questions debated in feminist philosophy. I identify a lacuna in an influential account of the social construction of human kinds developed by Ásta, a philosopher at Duke University. She claims that, by drawing a metaphysical distinction between people and their social properties, her “conferralist” account offers a plausible anti-essentialist story of the phenomenon of misgendering. Drawing on Dharmakīrti’s (c. 7th century CE) theory of perceptual ascertainment (niścayajñāna) and the notion of erroneous cognition (bhrāntijñāna) as articulated in the Pramāṇavārttika and the Pramāṇavārttikasvavṛtti, I argue that conferralism cannot give a compelling story of misgendering because it lacks a robust notion of error. Further, by incorporating an element resembling Dharmakīrti’s notion of conceptual error, Ásta’s account could give a plausible story of misgendering.