RESEARCH

the nature of prejudice

How are prejudices motivated? By bad emotions?

In my research, I argue prejudices involve emotional complexity and in some cases, even solely positive emotions. The view of prejudices as driven by bad emotions causes problems where people think they're not prejudiced because they have positive emotions about a marginalized group. We can see this where people claim things like, "I have a friend who is [part of x marginalized group]," where this seen as proof that they can't be prejudiced.

Why do prejudices resist change?

I argue that prejudices are frameworks of beliefs and assumptions about marginalized groups. One of the reasons prejudices resist change is because changing a prejudice would involve giving up not just the prejudiced belief, but many of the beliefs that support it. Often beliefs within the prejudiced framework are identity conferring. Making it against the agents perceived interest to go through the effort to change their belief structure.

feminist epistemology + privacy

How does unjust social power shape information norms?

Helen Nissenbaum rightly argued that exchanging information is a fundamental part of social life, and as a result, every social context we occupy has norms about what information to share. However, I argue her theory doesn't address how unjust social power shapes the norms of privacy. Privacy violations are both more common and more harmful to marginalized groups. I use empirical work on nonconsensual pornography to bolster this claim.

What's the relationship between epistemic injustice + privacy?