About “Resources”
We want to make sure that gender minorities in philosophy have access to a host of materials that can be used, distributed and be helpful to them in various ways. This covers materials for initiatives (such as event organisations), materials for guidance, and link collections.
Materials for Initiatives: Events need to be made accessible for gender-minorities, and certain issues surrounding safety, privacy and comfort need to be considered. However, initiatives often stop at a step prior to this: getting funding. Specifically, events targeted at gender minorities, or those projects with (philosophical) issues surrounding gender minorities in mind, often struggle to raise enough funding to make the project fully successful. To aid this, we want to:
Guidance Materials: Being a gender minority in academia can be scary, specifically if there are structures in place that make things harder for us to be safe and comfortable. However, many universities do have various structures that can help – but often, these are buried in subpages of websites, and initiatives are not communicated well. We want to put together some guidance to help with “where to typically look for guidance” at their own institutions. And this, ideally, should also help those who are in mentoring positions vis-à-vis gender minorities in academia: Many members of academia care deeply about gender minorities and trans people, but there is a lack of discussion about how to best give support. We aim to create a host of resources for mentors and mentees alike. As part of this, we want to collect those resources that are scattered around universities, departments and initiatives, and link them all in one place, to help us use the existing resources and structures, and find orientation in what could be done/changed/initiated. This will also necessarily have to take into account local differences: different countries tend to label resources in different ways, but not everybody, especially international students, might be aware of the differences.
Down the line, we would like to collect testimonies of people – specifically we want to provide positive testimonials: where do we find really good environments for gender minority staff and students? Is there a willingness to improve things? Where can you find a community? Equally, this might include testimonials about where it doesn’t work so well (yet). This is still some work-in-progress, but a resource we think would be useful to a lot of philosophers from gender minorities.
Collection of links: A lot of material that is helpful to gender minorities in philosophy, as well as otherwise marginalised philosophers, already exists - through the hard work of engaged individuals in our discipline. Here, we want to collect some of these resources as a link collection. Some of these links are on creating diverse reading lists, others are on ongoing projects in philosophy.
This is - ideally - a growing list: if you want to add something, drop us an email!
We want to make sure that gender minorities in philosophy have access to a host of materials that can be used, distributed and be helpful to them in various ways. This covers materials for initiatives (such as event organisations), materials for guidance, and link collections.
Materials for Initiatives: Events need to be made accessible for gender-minorities, and certain issues surrounding safety, privacy and comfort need to be considered. However, initiatives often stop at a step prior to this: getting funding. Specifically, events targeted at gender minorities, or those projects with (philosophical) issues surrounding gender minorities in mind, often struggle to raise enough funding to make the project fully successful. To aid this, we want to:
- Provide templates for funding applications – such as guidance on what works or where to best look for funding. We hope that this can help creating more events that can directly or indirectly raise awareness of the issues the taskforce is broadly concerned with.
- Create resources and suggestions for event organisers to ensure the safety and comfort of gender minorities, such as safer spaces policies, guidance for pronoun use, name tags, etc.
- Provide materials for initiatives and projects aimed at the inclusion of gender minorities. We want to do this by providing template policies to use in policy creation, to use in gender-inclusive initiatives and for further development.
Guidance Materials: Being a gender minority in academia can be scary, specifically if there are structures in place that make things harder for us to be safe and comfortable. However, many universities do have various structures that can help – but often, these are buried in subpages of websites, and initiatives are not communicated well. We want to put together some guidance to help with “where to typically look for guidance” at their own institutions. And this, ideally, should also help those who are in mentoring positions vis-à-vis gender minorities in academia: Many members of academia care deeply about gender minorities and trans people, but there is a lack of discussion about how to best give support. We aim to create a host of resources for mentors and mentees alike. As part of this, we want to collect those resources that are scattered around universities, departments and initiatives, and link them all in one place, to help us use the existing resources and structures, and find orientation in what could be done/changed/initiated. This will also necessarily have to take into account local differences: different countries tend to label resources in different ways, but not everybody, especially international students, might be aware of the differences.
Down the line, we would like to collect testimonies of people – specifically we want to provide positive testimonials: where do we find really good environments for gender minority staff and students? Is there a willingness to improve things? Where can you find a community? Equally, this might include testimonials about where it doesn’t work so well (yet). This is still some work-in-progress, but a resource we think would be useful to a lot of philosophers from gender minorities.
Collection of links: A lot of material that is helpful to gender minorities in philosophy, as well as otherwise marginalised philosophers, already exists - through the hard work of engaged individuals in our discipline. Here, we want to collect some of these resources as a link collection. Some of these links are on creating diverse reading lists, others are on ongoing projects in philosophy.
This is - ideally - a growing list: if you want to add something, drop us an email!
- Diversity Reading List: Can be used to make your reading lists more diverse, and find interesting readings on topics by marginalised members of our philosophical community or on topics that are underrepresented in philosophy https://diversityreadinglist.org/
- MAP International – Resources: Minorities and Philosophy international has an extensive list of resources that are incredibly helpful for any marginalised members of philosophy, and for those allies who want to make the dicipline a better place: http://www.mapforthegap.com/resources.html
- MAP UK – Inclusive Event guidelines: These event guidelines by MAP can help making sure that your event is inclusive https://www.mapforthegap.org.uk/inclusive-event-guidelines
- Project Vox: This project seeks to highlight philosophical works from marginalized individuals traditionally excluded from the philosophical canon http://projectvox.org/about-the-project/
- Rethinking Conferences: A guideline hybrid conferencing – sustainable and inclusive https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/arche/about-arche/guidelines-for-conference-organization/
- Safer Space Policy: Along similar lines to the MAP guidelines, this short policy can be used at your events and/or distributed in advance, to improve the safety and accessibility of events https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UVSFM_G1--MZWEnUPCCb2fO0FdrvQLbc/view?pli=1
- Talia Mae Bettcher (2022) - What is Trans Philosophy: This text by Bettcher provides an important discussion on trans philosophy as a contribution to trans studies. https://transreads.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/2022-01-24_61eef47b5f266_whatistransphilosophytaliamaebettcher.pdf
- Trans Philosophy Project: The Trans Philosophy Project supports philosophical and theoretical work that is accountable to & illuminative of trans lives and communities. https://www.transphilosophyproject.com/
- Under construction.