Friendship, love, and family

comments on sex, love, and Gender by Helga Varden

Abstract

As I reread and reflected on Sex, Love, and Gender, I found myself asking what the

bar for success for the goals of the book is, at least insofar as these goals concern its non-
Kantian audience (I know there are a rich array of contributions to the inside-baseball of

Kant scholarship here that just go well over my head). Where does this leave those of us who
work on sex, love, and gender within feminist, anti-oppressive, and inclusive traditions, in
our relationship to Kant? Asking this question highlights the subtlety and significance of what
Varden accomplishes. She is not aiming at anything so heavy-handed as conversion, I think (or
at least, I hope not), but rather, at opening up new kinds of conversation. I will no longer help
myself to straw-Kantians in discussions of the emotional, relational, and physical dimensions
of our personhood, and that I must move Kant from target to unlikely ally in some of the
topics I take closest to heart. I still think that the strength of Kantian theory (its complex and
comprehensive systematicity) is also very much its weakness (it often feels possible and easier
just to get from A to B without all this machinery, when discussing – for example, the value of
physical love, the importance of respect, or the significance of abortion rights) but I now find
myself to compelled to double check that I am not missing something, when I skip past it.

Thank you to Helga for such a provocative, thoughtful, brilliant and personal book. I
am grateful for having had the opportunity to read it, and a bit surprised to realize how much
I will bring Kant into future conversations on these topics.