Caleb Peng

This past semester in college I decided to take Feminist Philosophy. I went in not knowing much about feminism despite the fact that I took an Intro to Women’s Studies class and a Sexualities class prior to this class. One day during class we talked about Nominalism, which in this context refers to the belief that aspects of humanity should exist on a spectrum rather than separate groups (i.e. sexual orientation, race, sex).

This was particularly eye-opening for me because I always struggled with the concept that separate groups can be treated as equal even when society don’t view them as the same. For example: If whites and blacks were given the same rights and freedoms, can we just assume that people will eventually stop discriminating and making comparisons of the two races? Wouldn’t we always see skin color and thus allow us to group people into neat categories to place general characteristics on? I personally think that assumptions about groups of people will continue to occur as long as groups exist. But if we all lived on a spectrum of characteristics, then that may change things.