media
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Against Marriage at Festival of Ideas
I talked about Against Marriage at the Cambridge Festival of Ideas on Monday 15th October 2018, in the Frankopan Hall of Jesus College, Cambridge. Many states have recently expanded their definition of marriage to allow marriage between same-sex couples: a welcome move towards equality, but does this go far enough? Philosopher Clare Chambers argues for a more extreme position: that the state should not recognise marriage at all. State recognition of marriage, she will argue, is a violation of both equality and liberty – no matter how marriage is redefined. Tickets were sold out and so the talk was live-streamed. You can watch it on youtube here:
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How to Disagree on BBC Radio 4
Timandra Harkness interviewed me for the BBC Radio 4 series “How to Disagree: A Beginner’s Guide to Having Better Arguments”, episode 4. The topic of the discussion is moral disagreement, with particular reference to the topic of abortion. The episode was broadcast on 16 August 2018 and you can listen to it here.
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Sweet Reason on BBC Radio 4
You can hear me debate offence with Jordan Peterson, Shaista Aziz, and Evan Davis on BBC Radio 4’s “Sweet Reason”. Are people offended too easily? Are there some topics that should not be debated?The broadcast is on Thursday 2nd August 2018 at 9am and 9.30pm, and you can hear the programme online here.
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OUP Philosophy Festival reading list
Two of my articles feature in the OUP Philosophy Festival 2017 reading list, making them available for free download. You can find and read “The Marriage-Free State” and “Ideology and Normativity”, as well as many other excellent articles by other philosophers, here.
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OUP Women in Philosophy reading list
Against Marriage features in the Oxford University Press Women in Philosophy reading list. “This March, in recognition of Women’s History Month, the OUP Philosophy team will be celebrating Women in Philosophy. The philosophy discipline has long been perceived as male-dominated, so we want to recognize some of the incredible female philosophers from the past including Simone de Beauvoir, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Hannah Arendt, plus female philosophers doing great things in 2018 like Martha Nussbaum, Clare Chambers, and Kate Manne.” You can see the whole reading list here.
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Routledge Companion to Feminist Philosophy reviewed in Hypatia Reviews Online
I have a chapter on feminism and liberalism in The Routledge Companion to Feminist Philosophy, edited by Ann Garry, Serene J. Khader, and Alison Stone (Routledge, 2017). The volume has been reviewed by Amy Marvin in Hypatia Reviews Online. You can read the full review here. “The Routledge Companion to Feminist Philosophy presents an exciting, comprehensive, and original pluralist presentation of feminist philosophy that is a much-needed update to existing feminist philosophy companions. Students, scholars, independent researchers, and departments interested in feminism and philosophy would do well to make sure they have access to this volume, and it should be a relevant resource for years to come.”
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Quoted on marriage in The Guardian
Rose Hackman quotes me in a long-form piece on marriage in The Guardian. You can read the whole article here. ” “Married men gained rights over women’s bodies, property and children,” confirms Clare Chambers, a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Cambridge who wrote a book arguing for an end to state-recognized marriage. “Traditionally [marriage] has maintained legal gender inequality, and it has done so to the benefit of men.” “Chambers concedes that many formal inequalities tied to marriage have been denounced and revoked. Marital rape was outlawed in the UK in 1991 and in the US in 1993 – hard to believe there was ever an exemption –…
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The American Conservative on Against Marriage
They don’t like it. See here. Note that the article does not always read the argument of the book accurately.
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Fabian Society on Against Marriage
Andrew Harrop, General Secretary of the Fabian Society, reviewed Against Marriage in Fabian Review, May 2018. You can read the full review here. “Marriage makes me uncomfortable, whether the reason is political, historical, cultural or aesthetic. No matter how many married couples I see living modern equal relationships, for me, the whole concept is tainted by its patriarchal past. But I say ‘for me’ with good reason, as I have dozens of friends and comrades who disagree. This is a fault-line issue that divides socialists and feminists amongst themselves. In Against Marriage, Clare Chambers makes the case for why egalitarians and liberals should reject marriage. It is political philosophy at its…
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Against Marriage on JHIB blog
My Aeon article “Against Marriage” was recommended by the Journal for the History of Ideas Blog here.
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Times of India on Against Marriage
The Times of India featured my Aeon article “Against Marriage” on 22 April 2018. You can read the coverage here.
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Against Marriage at Aeon
I have a 3,300 word essay on “Against Marriage” at Aeon magazine. You can read the article here.
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Edinburgh Just World Institute blog
The University of Edinburgh Just World Institute blogged about my paper “Reasonable disagreement and the neutralist dilemma: Abortion and circumcision in Matthew Kramer’s Liberalism with Excellence”. You can read the blog here.
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Ask Me Anything (AMA) on Reddit
On 16 April I’ll be doing an AMA – Ask Me Anything! – for Reddit Philosophy. You can join in the fun at 12noon EST / 5pm GMT. Read the discussion here.
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Gli Stati Generali on the “Me Too” movement
I was interviewed by Valentina Saini for her piece “È L’ALBA DI UN’INTERNAZIONALE FEMMINISTA?” on the Italian news site Gli Stati Generali. You can read the piece, in Italian, here. For those who don’t speak Italian I don’t have a translation of the full article, but here are the answers I gave to Valentina Saini’s questions. VS: In many countries and regions of the world, sexual harassment in the form of a “pat” on a woman’s “butt”, for example, is seen as something innocent and harmless, nothing one should be especially offended by – many women think so too. Why is that? Is women’s body still something that does not belong…
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The Reading Lists
Want to know what books I like? You can read an interview with me by Phil Treagus of The Reading Lists blog here. His questions were fascinating to think about and very hard to answer!
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Against Marriage on BMJ blog
Richard Smith writes in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) blog that he is persuaded by the arguments of Against Marriage. You can read the full article here. “Chambers is against marriage on the grounds of equality and liberty. Women are not equal with men within marriage, and the state by attaching a bundle of rights and duties to marriage creates a hierarchy of relationships with marriage at the top, making unmarried couples and single people inferior. Much of the population, including my wife and I, thinks that “common law wives” have similar rights to married women, but in fact they have none. By bundling rights and duties together, marriage (and…
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The Politics of Marriage at LSE Forum
Marriage is an odd mix of sex, religion, and politics. Our speakers ask what marriage is and whether there is there any distinctive moral value in it. Should the state promote it? Is it possible to have an ‘equal’ marriage, or is marriage fundamentally an oppressive institution? Should marriage be rejected in favour of civil partnerships, or something else, or perhaps nothing else? You can watch a video of the event and listen to the podcast here. Speakers Clare Chambers Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Cambridge Sir Paul Coleridge Former high court judge and Chairman, The Marriage Foundation Peter Tatchell Activist and Director of the Peter Tatchell Foundation Chair Sarah…
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Dress codes at work for the BBC
Can your employer demand that you go to work naked? In this short video and article for the BBC I tell David Edmonds why not.
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“Time to abandon marriage?” in the TLS
The Times Literary Supplement (TLS) published my piece “Time to abandon marriage?” as part of their Ethical Angles Series (2017). Read it here.
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Regulating Religious Marriage at CEU
I gave a talk on “Regulating Religious Marriage” at the Central European University in Budapest. It was live streamed and podcast. Find it here and watch it here.
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Philosophy 24/7
You can listen to an interview with me on “The State and Marriage” at Philosophy 24/7 here.
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Broadly at Vice.Com
I provided comment and analysis for an article on the sharing economy by Sirin Kale at Broadly, titled “ ‘There was a Stranger in My Own House’: Is the Sharing Economy Safe for Women?”. You can read the article here. Women and minorities appear more likely to experience violence and discrimination on platforms like Uber and Airbnb. How did the gig economy go so wrong?
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Philosophers on same-sex marriage at Daily Nous
I am one of a panel of philosophers discussing the Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage at the Daily Nous blog. You can read it here. On Friday, June 26th, the Supreme Court of the United States announced its ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, holding that the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution guarantees the recognition and provision of same-sex marriage. It requires each of the 50 states in the US to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples seeking them, and to recognize legitimate same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions. … The decision is a landmark in the development of the rights and liberties of gay and lesbian people in the US, and is not without its controversy, of course. Many…
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Not the Fun Kind – Conference on Andrea Dworkin
I enjoyed speaking and listening at this event – a one-day conference on Andrea Dworkin, for activists and academics, at Anglia Ruskin University in July 2015. Find details here. You can watch a video of the session I spoke in here.
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BBC Radio 4 Broadcasting House
I took part in a “remunerations panel”, discussing the philosophy behind how much people should be paid. The item was broadcast live on 7th June 2015. You can listen here – the item starts 14 minutes in.
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3am magazine
An interview with me, focusing on my work in Sex, Culture, and Justice. Read the interview here. Clare Chambers chews over the core philosophical issues of sex, culture and justice for liberal feminists, brooding on practices of physical modification, social construction’s role in negotiating claims of universalism and tolerance, Foucault and the panopticon, Bourdieu and habitus, Mackinnon’s critique of liberal feminism, taking violence against women seriously, Benhabib’s discourse ethics, how not to be a relativist, of what kind of universality is worth defending and of the state of academic philosophy and feminism. This is a voice from a war zone. Listen up!
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Liberal Views
in The Philosophers' Magazine Issue 64 (2014).
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The Philosophers’ Magazine
My piece “Liberal views” discusses different models of separation of church and state, as they are conceptualised philosophically and as they apply to actual polities. The article is here.
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The Equality Illusion
Excellent book in activist feminism by Kat Banyard, founder of UK Feminista, citing my Sex, Culture, and Justice.