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Could I Have Been a Woman?: Meditations on a Controversial Benediction
- Philosophy and Literature
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 34, Number 2, October 2010
- pp. 425-434
- 10.1353/phl.2010.0010
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
As a Jewish man, I am expected by tradition to thank God each morning for not having made me a woman. I argue that in order to sincerely offer such thanks, I must believe that I could have been born female. While Saul Kripke seems to deny that possibility, a Kripkean who accepted Talmudic notions of embryology would not be so troubled. The danger of possession by a female spirit and the misfortune of coming into existence add further twists to the plot.