Conversational equality is inconsistent with managerial standing. If it’s my job to decide how the conversation proceeds, then our conversational relationship is hierarchical. I stand over you in the role of a teacher or leader or guide. When the physicist assumes managerial standing over the conversation, she is saying that she cannot sincerely converse as an equal with you. She could have a farce of a conversation in which she nods along while inwardly groaning, or she can give you some instruction. Given the sad state of your education in physics, these are her only options.

This brings us, finally, to the kind of speaking “as a woman” that engenders defensiveness and hostility. When I adopt managerial standing on the grounds of some demographic fact, I am saying that given the difference between us with respect to gender, race, sexual orientation, or socio-economic status, we cannot converse as equals — moreover, that in order for us to converse, you have to allow me to be in some way in charge of the conversation. You have to hand me the reins.

This demand on my part will sometimes be illegitimate — I may, in fact, be a bully, looking for a way to grab power, humiliate you or show off in front of others. But is it always illegitimate? If I speak as an X, managerially, I am saying that a certain ideal kind of conversation — conversation among equals — is impossible for us. Could that be, simply, true? Could it be that, as in the case of the physicist, our only option besides putting me in charge is fake conversation?

If the answer is, “yes,” this won’t be because demographic membership constitutes a form of expertise. We can use our expert replacement test: If you are having a conversation about rape with someone who says, “as a rape victim,” her claim to managerial standing, unlike any informational claim she might make, will in no way be undermined by the presence of a rape researcher. Unlike informational standing, managerial standing can be demographic “all the way down.”

So on what basis might someone claim such standing? Perhaps the most familiar case is one in which systematic and entrenched forms of injustice have ossified group relations into ones of unequal respect. It would not, of course, follow that individual members of those groups were barred from showing one another equal respect — but it would also be plausible that, at times, strangers instantiate these ossified relations, even unknowingly. In such a case, speaking as a member of the disrespected group could be a way of both drawing attention to this fact, and attempting to redress it. Such a speaker is saying, given the presence of structural inequality, an unequal conversation is the only sincere, honest way forward. Anything else would require her to nod along, inwardly groaning.

These issues of structural injustice can be very tricky. Consider the summer of 2018 controversy that arose around the work of Kathleen Stock, a philosophy professor who argues against redefining the category of woman and lesbian to include trans women. Why does the terminology matter so much here? Among other things, what is at stake is the question of whether trans women have managerial standing to speak as women.

It is also important to note that not every case of demographic managerial standing will be predicated on injustice. Someone with personal experience of a natural disaster might not to be able to speak on that topic without getting emotional. Allowing that person to manage the conversation may make it possible for him to be as rational as he can be, under the circumstances.