Matthew Andler: What’s special about sexual orientation?

Tuesday June 18 2024 @12:00 (CEST)
Sala B, Edificio de Humanidades, UNED & online

Abstract
Suppose that José is gay, with a strong interest in short men — or tall men, or men with green eyes, or men from Madrid, etc. Embedded here is a distinction between orientations and preferences, which points to a foundational question in the social ontology of sexuality: Why do some aspects of sexuality (and not others) count as sexual orientations? In this talk, I argue that sexual orientations are sexual dispositions with a shared social significance; more specifically, I argue that sexual orientations are sexual dispositions that function to position individuals in relation to heteropatriarchal kinship structures. In addition to answering the aforementioned demarcation question of sexual orientation, a key aim of this talk will be to describe the metaphysics of heteropatriarchal kinship structures, which I think have underappreciated import across a range of philosophical discussions.

Bio
Matthew Andler is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Saint Louis University, Madrid Campus. He works in social metaphysics, and is especially interested in the fundamental structure of gender and sexuality.