Today, for International Women’s Day, we’re spotlighting Dr. Cressida Heyes, a professor at the University of Alberta and a leading voice in feminist philosophy. Her work has legitimized feminist philosophy as a recognized field while also redefining the topics and methods of philosophy itself.
Through an intersectional feminist lens, Dr. Heyes explores gender and identity, blending theory with cultural insights. She examines fundamental questions about womanhood, the body’s role in shaping identity, and the unconscious dimensions of personal experience. Her research tackles complex issues such as sexual violence, addiction, and traumatic childbirth while advocating for gender-inclusive policies, including reproductive rights and pay equity.
By challenging misinformation about sex and gender, Dr. Heyes’ work is a powerful reminder of both the progress made and the challenges that remain in today’s evolving social and political landscape.
Q: Could you tell us about yourself and your work in feminist philosophy?
A: I grew up in the UK and came to North America for graduate school. After a stint in Montreal and another in the US Midwest, I settled in Edmonton, where I am a professor and hold a Henry Marshall Tory Chair in Political Science and Philosophy at the University of Alberta. My work in feminist philosophy has been very wide-ranging. One way or another it’s all about how human beings are connected to political systems, and how those systems in turn make us into certain kinds of people.
I’ve written three books: the first articulated an inclusive concept of “women” that was both intersectional and trans-friendly; the second was about how radical bodily changes are implicated with changes to the self; and the third is about “experience”—what’s inside or outside one’s experience (even though it might have happened to you, something can still be outside your experience, I suggest). That book, Anaesthetics of Existence, got into some difficult examples: being raped while unconscious, everyday drug use (and extreme addiction), and the pain of childbirth.
Q: What would you say is one of the most impactful insights or findings from your research?
A: In my latest research I think the important insights are that sleep is a culturally mediated phenomenon (perhaps not news) and that how we represent sleep says a lot about the kind of worlds we inhabit and want to make. A high-level conclusion might be that we tend to over-value doing at the expense of not-doing. “Productivity” has become a revered personal trait, but we’ve lost track of how to value what we’re doing. If we all keep producing—and feeling the pressure to produce more and more—that will likely accelerate world-ending climate change, for example. So, I do a lot of investigating of how rest, refusal, and even slacking get represented in our cultures, with an eye to showing the kind of values we’re embedding without even being conscious of it.
Q: In what ways does your work connect with the themes of International Women’s Day?
A: My work has always been about gender. I used to hold the Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Gender and Sexuality, and that is a good description of the strange field I work in! Debates about what gender is, who gets to define gender (and for whom), and how this is all connected to issues that concern women (reproductive rights, pay equity, sexual violence) have never been more visible and important. I follow lots of media channels both local and international, and it is extraordinary how many prejudices, messy ideas, and downright falsehoods are propagated about sex and gender! I want to help people sort these ideas out so that they can understand how misinformation is generating (and feeding on) our emotional responses.
Q: Why do you think International Women’s Day holds such importance today?
A: International Women’s Day remains really important. It’s an opportunity to celebrate all women and our achievements, and to talk about the injustices that women globally continue to face. It’s shocking that there are people in the global North who are more focused on the alleged dangers to their daughters of transgirls in school sports, than on the rollbacks of reproductive freedoms that we see across political contexts where far-right “populist” governments have won power. The idea that there is some “gender ideology” that is poisoning minds has a very far-reaching influence, at the same time as women are losing control of our bodies and lives in ways that we only just won in the last 75 years.
Q: What changes would you like to see for the future, and what steps can we take to make them a reality?
A: I’d like to see institutions (including universities) working to create spaces where all aesthetic gender expressions are welcome—no matter what bodies they are attached to. This means, for example, really manageable stuff like allowing pronouns of choice, creating gender-neutral washrooms, and making name changes administratively easy. I see this work as entirely consonant with other policies that work toward ending barriers to equal opportunity created by gender. These include affordable childcare, robust and intersectional pay equity reviews, smarter education around how gender expectations shape evaluation, systems that support victims of sexual violence and don’t assume that failing carceral systems are somehow doing the job, and so on. There are so many things for a feminist to do!
For More on Dr. Cressida Heyes, 2024 New RSC Fellow
This interview is part of RSC Voices, where we highlight RSC members, their informed perspectives, and impactful work.
