There are important similarities between moral thought and talk and thought and talk about gender: disagreements about gender, like disagreements about morality, seem to be intractable and to outstrip descriptive agreement; and it seems coherent to reject any definition of what it is to be a woman in terms of particular social, biological, or other descriptive features, just as it seems coherent to reject any definition of what it is to be good or right in terms of any set of descriptive properties. These similarities give us reason to investigate the idea that, like moral thought and talk, gender thought and talk is inherently normative. This paper proposes a normative account of gender thought and talk in terms of fitting treatment. On this fitting treatment account, to judge that A is gender G is just to judge that it is fitting to treat A as a G. This account is a descriptive or hermeneutical account of our gender thought and talk rather than an ameliorative account of our gender concepts or a metaphysical account of gender properties in social metaphysics. This paper argues that other descriptive accounts of gender thought and talk face problems that the fitting treatment account overcomes.

中文翻译：

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性别的规范性

道德思想和谈话与思想和谈论性别之间有重要的相似之处：关于性别的分歧，就像关于道德的分歧，似乎是棘手的，并且超越了描述性的一致；拒绝根据特定的社会、生物学或其他描述性特征来定义什么是女性似乎是连贯的，正如拒绝任何关于什么是好的或正确的定义似乎是连贯的任何一组描述性属性。这些相似性使我们有理由研究这样一种观点，即与道德思想和谈话一样，性别思想和谈话本质上是规范的。本文从适应性治疗的角度提出了对性别思想和谈话的规范说明。在这个合适的治疗帐户上，判断 A 是性别 G 只是判断将 A 视为 G 是合适的。这种解释是对我们的性别思想和谈话的描述性或解释性解释，而不是对我们性别概念的改善性解释或对性别的形而上学解释社会形而上学中的性别属性。本文认为，其他关于性别思想和谈话的描述性描述面临着合适的治疗描述所克服的问题。