Becoming a Woman. Simone de Beauvoir and the Politics of Trans Existence, by Megan Burke

[En] For this second session of 2025, we are delighted to welcome Megan Burke, author of Becoming a Woman. Simone de Beauvoir and The Politics of Trans Existence (Polity Books 2025). Megan will be in conversation with philosophers Ellie Anderson (Pomona College, USA) and Perry Zurn (American University, USA). 

Participants: 

Megan Burke is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Sonoma State University (USA). They are a longtime member of The International Simone de Beauvoir Society and previously served as its first Coordinator of Communications. Megan is interested in the meanings, structures, and norms of gender, race, sexuality, class, and nationality, and has authored When Time Warps The Lived Experience of Gender, Race, and Sexual Violence (University of Minnesota Press, 2019) and Becoming a Woman. Simone de Beauvoir and the Politics of Trans Existence (Polity Books 2025) is their latest book.

Ellie Anderson is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Pomona College (USA). Her research focuses on relational theories of selfhood, the philosophy of love, and sexual ethics. She is currently completing a monograph on the phenomenology of selfhood and a series of articles on sexual ethics and love, as well as preparing a book critically analyzing self-care and self-objectification in contemporary life. Ellie is also co-host of Overthink podcast and YouTube channel. 

Perry Zurn is Provost Associate Professor of Philosophy at American University, and affiliate faculty in the Department of Critical Race, Gender, and Culture Studies, the Honors Program, and the Antiracist Research and Policy Center. He researches primarily in political philosophy, critical theory, trans theory and lgtbq+ studies, and collaborates in psychology and network neuroscience. He is the author of Curiosity and Power: The Politics of Inquiry (2021) and How We Make Each Other: Trans Life at the Edge of the University (2025), as well as the co-author of Curious Minds: The Power of Connection (2022). He is also the co-editor of Trans Philosophy (2024), Curiosity Studies: A New Ecology of Knowledge (2020), and Active Intolerance: Michel Foucault, the Prisons Information Group, and the Future of Abolition (2016), as well as the co-editor and co-translator of Intolerable: Writings from Michel Foucault and the Prisons Information Group, 1970-1980 (2021).

The book (presentation from the editor) : 

"This highly engaging analysis of the contemporary global social and political landscape of trans antagonisms draws specific attention to gender-critical mobilizations of Simone de Beauvoir's account of becoming a woman in The Second Sex to advance and justify trans-exclusionary positions. Through a careful examination and application of Beauvoir's philosophical and political commitments, Becoming a Woman compellingly explores the significance of her notion of becoming not only as affirmative of trans women, but also as an ethical demand to affirm trans possibilities. More than a reply to gender-critical readings of Beauvoir, this book develops an original, Beauvoirian ethics of gender affirmation that shows why we ought to challenge trans exclusion and anti-trans movements."