Hi Simon, glad you enjoyed the talk. It’s a shame that we didn’t get chance to catch up in Kent, but hopefully things will be different by this time next year!

I’m completely on board with your line of thought here. But I’m not entirely sure how to both embrace all of what you say – which I also want to say – whilst giving an informative account of gender identity in terms of norm-relevancy.

One thought that strikes me is to hold that accounts of gender identity shouldn’t be in the business of trying to give precise accounts of what distinguishes an identity as one gender from another. But that’s consistent with holding that our gender identities are fully explained by our experiences of norm-relevancy in the way that I suggest in the talk. This is similar to the line that Elizabeth Barnes pursues in her ‘Gender and Gender Terms’ where – if my reading is correct – she argues that we should not want metaphysical accounts of what gender is to give accounts of what distinguishes different genders. Similarly, we should not want or expect metaphysical accounts of what gender identities are to give accounts of what particular gender identities consist in, but only what explains or grounds gender identities. (Perhaps think of it as analogous to how we don’t want views in metaethics about what kind of things ground moral properties – natural properties, non-natural properties etc. – to tell us what distinguishes the property of being right from the property of being wrong). These are just sketchy thoughts. But let me know what you think, and thanks for the comment, which has given me a lot to think about.

I was very interested in the non-normative sense of relevance that you mentioned. I’d have loved to see this fleshed out more. I think it perhaps links to the normative sense in the following way. The nurse that you describe doesn’t just randomly see a collection of nurse-related norms as relevant to them. They see these norms as applying to them *because they are a nurse*. It might be that the nurse norms overlap with a lot with the norms of some other profession, maybe paramedic. But this doesn’t mean that the nurse has the practical identity of a paramedic. Similarly, it seems like the relevance of norms associated with gender can only contribute to my gender identity if I see them applying to me *because I am a woman*. The woman who has lots of ‘masculine’ hobbies and sees these masculine norms as applying to her does not thereby have a masculine gender identity because she does not seem them as applying to her *because she is a man*. She sees them as applying to her as e.g. a lumberjack or an explorer etc. So it seems like any norm-based account needs to include that the norms as seen as relevant (in either the normative or descriptive sense) because they match the person’s gender identity. I’m still trying to decide if this is viciously circular or if the right understanding of what it is to have a practical identity can make this not viciously circular but merely reflective or something.

Hi Fiona, thanks so much for this very helpful suggestion. I’m tempted to think that going this way isn’t circular – which is great.
Suppose we don’t understand genders entirely in terms of gender identity. For instance, suppose we say that to be gender G is either to have the gender identity G or to be G in some other way such as to have the social property of being G (e.g. to be G according to the Haslangerian account of gender properties).
Then we might spell out the non-normative sense of norm relevancy in the following way:
Non-Normative Sense of Norm-Relevancy: A sees the norms associated with G as relevant to them because they have the social property of being G.
This won’t be circular because the social property won’t be understood in terms of gender identity.

I’m not sure that we can make the same move with an account of the normative sense of norm-relevancy. (Although I will give this a go as it might well be possible). But I’m not sure that I need to make this move with the normative sense.
Though your nurse and paramedic case makes me a little worried. I guess that this might point to a way in which a nurse’s identity as a nurse can be somewhat different from someone’s gender identity when that consists in a normative experience of norm-relevancy. The nurse may well see non-instrumental reasons to live up to certain norms (at least partially) because they have the social property of being a nurse. But we can see non-instrumental reasons to live up to gendered norms even if we do not have the social property associated with those norms.
I’ll go and think about and read some more literature on practical identity which might make this all clearer. Thanks again.