With two Italian/Australian bioethicists under attack in the media around the globe over the moral permissibility of infanticide, there are signs of the collywobbles in the profession as a whole. Over at the Journal of Medical Ethics blog, Iain Brassington, presents as evidence an interview with a leading feminist bioethicist, Hilde Lindemann.

“A few years ago I was at a metaethics workshop, and over breakfast a male colleague and I made a game of ranking the different specialties in philosophy according to how prestigious they were - a ranking with a precise inverse correlation to gender. Here’s the list we came up with:

“* Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Language, and Metaphysics: The alpha-dominant philosophy, done by Real Men 
* Epistemology and Philosophy of Science: Done by manly enough men 
* Metaethics: Done by men who aren’t entirely secure in their masculinity 
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