Ethically and politically it is important to face up to the need for a universal perspective in our divided, multi-cultural, unequal and unjust world.

The subject of feminism cannot be purely a fiction, as some postmodern writers suggest, produced by the discourses of power.

I think that both pornography and the imposition (common in some areas of the world) of a dress code on women are problematic.

However, within the limits of the human, it is important to recognise our common humanity. I think that a perspective based on common human needs has the most chance of being accepted and this does not depend on any particular metaphysical outlook.

When it comes to deep and difficult ethical matters - such as the relation of an individual to God, or, I think, an individual caught up in the sublimity of a revolution then things are very different and the Kantian ethic is shown to be limited in its value.

Whatever the universal perspective one adopts, it is important to recognise that some form of universalism is politically and ethically necessary.

If there are more than two sexes, then so be it and, of course, the assumption that there are two helps shape, as many have argued, the binary logic that underpins much of the history of western philosophy.