Conceding too much: on the limitations of ethical first-person authority for trans-inclusive metaphysics

Abstract Trans-inclusive theorising aims to account for gender in ways that accurately and ethically capture the reality of both cis and trans people. A central development has been first-person authority (FPA), the claim that people have a distinctive authority regarding their gender in virtue of their first-person position (Bettcher, 2009). This paper argues that while FPA should remain fundamental, we have reason to reject its first and most influential formulation, ethical first-person authority . A gender ontology dependent on ethical-FPA risks undermining the concept of misgendering, which is essential for diagnosing and resisting trans oppression. The difficulty comes from the gap ethical-FPA creates between ethics and metaphysics: avowals carry moral weight such that they must not be overridden, yet they do not determine what a person is because their authority is ethical rather than metaphysical or epistemic. Any theory implying that ordinary cases of transphobic misgendering nonetheless involve true beliefs or statements on behalf of the transphobe, stands in danger of obscuring what is at stake. This will be demonstrated through the work of Katharine Jenkins (2023) and Talia Mae Bettcher (2025a), both of whom adopt ethical-FPA as a safeguard within their gender ontologies. Jenkins and Bettcher employ competing pluralist strategies to mitigate these risks, yet neither succeeds in avoiding the misgendering problem ethical-FPA generates, casting doubt on both pluralism and ethical-FPA as viable strategies for a trans-inclusive gender ontology.