We build on the emerging research that shows aversive subordinate workplace behaviors are likely related to abusive supervision in the workplace. Specifically, we develop and test a moderated-mediation model outlining the process of abusive supervision based on the stressor-emotion model of counterproductive work behavior. We argue that subordinate interpersonal deviance prompts supervisor negative emotions, which then leads supervisors to engage in abusive supervision. We also argue that subordinate organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is likely to play a crucial role in predicting (...) abusive supervision. We argue that interpersonal deviance is more likely to prompt abusive supervision through supervisor negative emotions when the magnitude of an employee’s engagement in OCB is weaker. Study 1, a time-lagged field study, tests and provides support for the relationships among our key variables (Hypotheses 1–3). Study 2, utilizing multisource field data (i.e., subordinate–supervisor dyads), replicates the results from Study 1 and provides support for the entire moderated-mediation model while controlling for tenure with supervisor, subordinate task performance, and subordinate conscientiousness. We find general support for our predictions. We conclude with a discussion of theoretical and practical implications as well as future research directions. (shrink)

Building on the emerging research on antecedents of abusive supervision, the current research offers an empirical investigation concerning how and when supervisor psychological entitlement instigates abusive supervision in the workplace. Specifically, drawing on social cognitive theory, we develop and test a moderated-mediation model delineating the process that prompts psychologically entitled supervisors to become abusive towards subordinates. We argue that supervisor psychological entitlement facilitates supervisor moral disengagement, which subsequently incites supervisory abusive behaviors. We also argue that supervisor moral identity and core (...) self-evaluation are likely to play an essential role in predicting the relationship between supervisor psychological entitlement and abusive supervision. We argue that supervisor psychological entitlement is more likely to instigate abusive supervision through moral disengagement when the magnitudes of supervisor MI and CSE are weaker. We test our theoretical model utilizing time-lagged, multisource data from a variety of organizations in the United States. We find general support for our hypotheses. We discuss implications for theory and practice as well as future research avenues. (shrink)

Background: Over the last decade, new healthcare policies are transforming healthcare practices towards independent living and self-care of older people and people with a chronic disease or disability within the community. For professional caregivers in home care, such as nurses, this requires a shift from a caring attitude towards the promotion of patient autonomy. Aim: To explore how nurses in home care deal with the transformation towards fostering patient autonomy and self-care. Research design and context: A case study was conducted (...) in a professional development course (‘learning circle’) for home care nurses, including participant observations and focus groups. The theoretical notion of ‘relational agency’ and the moral concept of ‘practices of responsibility’ were used to conduct a narrative analysis on the nurses’ stories about autonomy. Participants: Eight nurses, two coaches and two university lecturers who participated in the learning circle. Ethical considerations: Informed consent was sought at the start of the course and again, at specific moments during the course of the learning circle. Findings: Three main themes were found that expressed the moral demands experienced and negotiated by the nurses: adapting to the person, activating patients’ strengths and collaboration with patients and informal caregivers. Discussion: On a policy and organisational level, the moral discourse on patient autonomy gets intertwined with the instrumental discourse on healthcare budget savings. This is manifested in the ambiguities the nurses face in fostering patient autonomy in their daily home care practice. To support nurses, critical thinking, moral sensitivity and trans-professional working should be part of their professional development. Conclusion: The turn towards autonomy in healthcare raises moral questions about responsibilities for care. Promoting patient autonomy should be a collaborative endeavour and deliberation of patients, professional and informal caregivers together. (shrink)

This paper undertakes a fresh appraisal of German emigration to Brazil as an important but mainly overlooked component of nineteenth-century German identity construction and nationalism. It analyzes Brazil as a controversial political space of national imagination, colonial fantasy, and intercultural translation and evaluates the German emigrant community in Brazil as an invention that is, until today, a depiction heavily loaded with ideological and racial bias. Drawing on Flusser’s thoughts on “Heimat” and migration, this article outlines an intercultural and interdisciplinary approach (...) that takes into consideration inventions in the German-language context and in the Portuguese-language context as well as the dynamics between languages and cultures. (shrink)

While the demands for greater engagement in science in general and regulatory science in particular have been steadily increasing, we still face limited understanding of the empirical resonance of these demands. Against this context, this paper presents findings from a recent study of a potential participatory opening of the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, a prominent regulatory scientific organization in the field of risk governance. Drawing upon quantitative surveys of the public and selected professional experts as well as in-depth (...) qualitative expert interviews, we identify a general support for greater engagement in science-based risk assessment. However, we also find significant contestation concerning its potential enactment and its normative and strategic merit. Underlying these contestations, we identify the persistence of a normal view of science and decisionist understanding of risk assessment, which create conflicting legitimacy demands for BfR and other regulatory scientific organizations. Together with concerns about imbalances in the power to participate, especially in highly specialized engagement processes, these pose significant challenges for the institutionalization of more participatory practices. (shrink)

L'histoire moderne du Liban illustre merveilleusement bien le lien étroit entre les conflits externes qui le guettent et les dissensions internes qui le fragilisent sur fond d'allégeances confessionnelles et sectaires. Pourtant, ces facteurs de vulnérabilité sont aussi les agents de survie de ce pays, car associés au destin même de ce minuscule État. Lieu de rencontre de minorités persécutées ailleurs, il se dresse en antithèse par rapport aux pays qui l'entourent. Par ce fait même, il devient l'édifice même d'une diversité (...) rare que ses propres citoyens se plaisent à défendre. C'est le paradoxe que nous essaierons de comprendre dans cet article.The modern history of Lebanon beautifully illustrates the link between external conflicts it faces internal divisions and weaken the background confessional and sectarian allegiances. However, these vulnerabilities are also the agents of survival of this country, because the destiny associated with this tiny state. Meeting place for persecuted minorities elsewhere, it stands in antithesis compared to surrounding countries. By this fact, it is the building itself a rare diversity as its own citizens like to defend. This is the paradox that we try to understand in this article. (shrink)

Summary Much recent historiography assumes that republican calls for religious liberty in seventeenth-century England were limited to Protestant dissenters. Nevertheless there is evidence that some radical voices during the Civil War and Interregnum period were willing to extend this toleration even to ?false religions?, including Catholicism, provided their members promised loyalty and allegiance to the government. Using the case study of the republican Henry Neville, this article will argue that toleration for Catholics was still an option during the Exclusion Crisis (...) of the late seventeenth century despite new fears of a growth of ?popery and arbitrary government?. Neville's tolerationist approach, it will be shown, was driven by his Civil War and Interregnum experience, as well as by political pragmatism and very personal circumstances which shaped his attitude towards Catholics in his own country and abroad. (shrink)

The recent proliferation of settler colonial and Indigenous studies of Palestine have addressed the historical and present-day enclosure of Palestinian land, yet the question of ‘indigeneity’ is underexamined in this literature. Claims to indigeneity in Palestine straddle varied definitions: a racial category; as constructed through the colonial encounter or preceding colonialism; and as a local relation or an international juridico-political category. Using discourse analysis and ethnography of a specific Palestinian sustainable agriculture initiative, I show how for Palestinians, claiming indigeneity brings (...) into tension potential political economic gains, social relations of struggle, and discursive formations of collective subjectivity. A valorisation and commodification of indigeneity as a racial category narrows notions of indigeneity to the biological-cultural, offering challenges for Palestinian struggles for sovereignty. I conclude by asking what theorising from Palestine offers to Marxist theories of racial capitalism and settler colonialism, and whether indigeneity can exceed its commodification. (shrink)

‘My Africa Reads’ is a memoir that looks back at my reading history. The ‘Preamble’ identifies authors who influenced my worldview during my secondary and tertiary education in the UK and who remained my companions during the first decade of my return to Nigeria. From this immersion in Eurocentric literature, the memoir progresses to my encounter with postcolonial African literature in the collective setting of the Africa Book Group, which I joined in 2002 and led from 2014 to 2018. The (...) memoir looks at authors and literature that the international women of ABG have engaged with, and at meetings at which guest experts spoke on aspects of African studies and affairs. It highlights the power of ABG—a shared reading experience—to advance that part of my cultural liberation facilitated by good postcolonial literature and open, unconstrained discussions with other women. (shrink)

This study explores how therapists deal with ethical dilemmas in psychotherapy with older adults. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 therapists and analyzed using grounded theory methodology. Findings clustered around three themes: (i) respecting autonomy when interacting with family of vulnerable and dependent older patients; (ii) prioritizing respecting autonomy in risk situations and in suspected financial abuse without impaired judgment; and (iii) prioritizing protecting the patient in risk situations of patients with dementia and of suspected physical abuse or neglect. These (...) findings highlight several important issues regarding the management of ethical dilemmas in psychotherapy with vulnerable and dependent older adults. (shrink)

While algorithmic decision-making (ADM) is projected to increase exponentially in the coming decades, the academic debate on whether people are ready to accept, trust, and use ADM as opposed to human decision-making is ongoing. The current research aims at reconciling conflicting findings on ‘algorithmic aversion’ in the literature. It does so by investigating algorithmic aversion while controlling for two important characteristics that are often associated with ADM: increased benefits (monetary and accuracy) and decreased user control. Across three high-powered (Ntotal = (...) 1192), preregistered 2 (agent: algorithm/human) × 2 (benefits: high/low) × 2 (control: user control/no control) between-subjects experiments, and two domains (finance and dating), the results were quite consistent: there is little evidence for a default aversion against algorithms and in favor of human decision makers. Instead, users accept or reject decisions and decisional agents based on their predicted benefits and the ability to exercise control over the decision. (shrink)

The manuscript of Algernon Sidney’s Discourses Concerning Government was used in evidence against him in the 1683 treason trial which cost the republican his life. The work’s attack on absolute monarchy and its justification of rebellion against tyrannical rulers were considered so inflammatory that it could not be published with impunity in England until after the Glorious Revolution and the lapse of the Licensing Act. It was eventually prepared for the press in 1698 by the Commonwealthman John Toland in collaboration (...) with the printer and bookseller John Darby who were jointly responsible for establishing a whole canon of republican and Commonwealth works around this time. While a French edition of the Discourses was published in the Netherlands shortly afterwards, the first German edition of Sidney’s most famous work did not appear until almost a century later. Amidst the constitutional debates in the wake of the French Revolution, Sidney’s work was now employed in a new context to criticise tyrannical rule, while warning against violent excesses. (shrink)

Moral sensitivity is known to be the starting point for moral competence and even is a core concept in the curricula for bachelor’s-level nursing students in the Netherlands. While the development of moral sensitivity in nursing is commonly agreed to be important, there is no clear understanding of how to develop moral sensitivity through nursing education and what components of nursing education contribute to moral sensitivity. Studies on educational interventions could build knowledge about what works in developing moral sensitivity and (...) how to achieve this outcome. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore if and how educational interventions contribute to the development of moral sensitivity in nursing students. A scoping review was conducted. Four electronic databases were searched: CINAHL, PubMed, MEDLINE and SpringerLink. Articles that were not about formal or initial nursing education and that had no link to moral development or moral sensitivity were excluded. After the final selection on educational interventions, 10 articles out of the initial 964 resources were included in the review. Three different but related dimensions of moral sensitivity emerged from the literature: (1) raising moral awareness, (2) providing the ability to frame and name ethical issues and (3) improving moral reasoning ability. Half of the studies used quantitative measures to evaluate the educational intervention, in particular the Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire; the other half used diverse qualitative evaluation methods. None of the studies presented teaching methods that included all three dimensions of moral sensitivity. Moral awareness of self appears to be more loosely connected to the other two dimensions, which raises the question of whether it can be seen as a prerequisite for them. To encompass all dimensions of moral sensitivity, a mix of quantitative and qualitative measures seems most appropriate to study that topic. (shrink)

We apply molecular code theory to a rule-based model of the human inner kinetochore and study how complex formation in general can give rise to molecular codes. We analyze 105 reaction networks generated from the rule-based inner kinetochore model in two variants: with and without dissociation of complexes. Interestingly, we found codes only when some but not all complexes are allowed to dissociate. We show that this is due to the fact that in the kinetochore model proteins can only bind (...) at kinetochores by attaching to already attached proteins and cannot form complexes in free solution. Using a generalized linear mixed model we study which centromere protein can take which role in a molecular code . By this, associations between CENPs and code roles are found. We observed that CenpA is a major risk factor while CenpQ is a major protection factor . Finally we show, using an abstract model of copolymer formation, that molecular codes can also be realized solely by the formation of stable complexes, which do not dissociate. For example, with particular dimers as context a molecular code mapping from two different monomers to two particular trimers can be realized just by non-selective complex formation. We conclude that the formation of protein complexes can be utilized by the cell to implement molecular codes. Living cells thus facilitate a subsystem allowing for an enormous flexibility in the realization of mappings, which can be used for specific regulatory processes, e.g. via the context of a mapping. (shrink)

The boundary problem is related to the binding problem, part of a family of puzzles and phenomenal experiences that theories of consciousness (ToC) must either explain or eliminate. By comparison with the phenomenal binding problem, the boundary problem has received very little scholarly attention since first framed in detail by Rosengard in 1998, despite discussion by Chalmers in his widely cited 2016 work on the combination problem. However, any ToC that addresses the binding problem must also address the boundary problem. (...) The binding problem asks how a unified first person perspective (1PP) can bind experiences across multiple physically distinct activities, whether billions of individual neurons firing or some other underlying phenomenon. To a first approximation, the boundary problem asks why we experience hard boundaries around those unified 1PPs and why the boundaries operate at their apparent spatiotemporal scale. We review recent discussion of the boundary problem, identifying several promising avenues but none that yet address all aspects of the problem. We set out five specific boundary problems to aid precision in future efforts. We also examine electromagnetic (EM) field theories in detail, given their previous success with the binding problem, and introduce a feature with the necessary characteristics to address the boundary problem at a conceptual level. Topological segmentation can, in principle, create exactly the hard boundaries desired, enclosing holistic, frame-invariant units capable of effecting downward causality. The conclusion outlines a programme for testing this concept, describing how it might also differentiate between competing EM ToCs. (shrink)

The European refugee crisis is an important topic on media, political, and public agendas. Due to its scope and impact, its continuing prevalence on the media-agenda and the divisiveness of public debate, new research is needed to understand the media’s framing of the issue. This study inductively analyzes framing of the refugee crisis of 2015–2016 by two Dutch newspapers. Portrayal of the refugee crisis consists of ten different frames and counter frames. The frames are communicated on the level of the (...) refugee, on the level of the crisis as an event, and on a societal level. Results show that recent reporting on the refugee crisis is relatively nuanced and portrays the crisis from a variety of perspectives. Framing changes following certain transitory events, but only slight differences were found between popular and quality papers. (shrink)

Let ‘semantic relevance’ be the thesis that the wide semantic properties of representational mental states (like beliefs and desires) are causally relevant to behavior. A popular way of arguing for semantic relevance runs as follows: start with a sufficient counterfactual condition for causal or explanatory relevance, and show that wide semantic properties meet it with respect to behavior (e.g., Loewer & Lepore (1987,1989), Rescorla (2014), Yablo (2003)).This paper discusses an in‐principle limitation of this strategy: even the most sophisticated counterfactual criteria (...) systematically misclassify irrelevant properties as relevant when they stand in certain kinds of modal co‐variation or ‘entanglement’ relations to genuinely relevant properties. This entanglement problem, I argue, is more general and more serious than proponents of the counterfactual strategy have recognized: it threatens recent interventionist arguments for semantic relevance, and is not easily solved by appeal to proportionality or naturalness. I end by suggesting that proponents of semantic relevance may need to shift their attention from patterns of counterfactuals to the lawful psychological generalizations that explain them. (shrink)

There have been several different and even opposed conceptions of the problem of logical constants, i.e. of the requirements that a good theory of logical constants ought to satisfy. This paper is in the first place a survey of these conceptions and a critique of the theories they have given rise to. A second aim of the paper is to sketch some ideas about what a good theory would look like. A third aim is to draw from these ideas and (...) from the preceding survey the conclusion that most conceptions of the problem of logical constants involve requirements of a philosophically demanding nature which are probably not satisfiable by any minimally adequate theory. (shrink)

This paper examines from a historical perspective Tarski's 1936 essay, "On the concept of logical consequence." I focus on two main aims. The primary aim is to show how Tarski's definition of logical consequence satisfies two desiderata he himself sets forth for it: (1) it must declare logically correct certain formalizations of the -rule and (2) it must allow for variation of the individual domain in the test for logical consequence. My arguments provide a refutation of some interpreters of Tarski, (...) and notably John Etchemendy, who have claimed that his definition does not satisfy those desiderata. A secondary aim of the paper is to offer some basic elements for an understanding of Tarski's definition in the historical logico-philosophical context in which it was proposed. Such historical understanding provides useful insights on Tarski's informal ideas on logical consequence and their internal cohesion. (shrink)

BackgroundThis article aims to contribute to a better conceptualization of pain and suffering by providing non-essential and non-naturalistic definitions of both phenomena. Contributions of classical evidence-based medicine, the humanistic turn in medicine, as well as the phenomenology and narrative theories of suffering and pain, together with certain conceptions of the person beyond them are critically discussed with such purpose.MethodsA philosophical methodology is used, based on the review of existent literature on the topic and the argumentation in favor of what are (...) found as better definitions of suffering and pain.ResultsPain can be described in neurological terms but cognitive awareness, interpretation, behavioral dispositions, as well as cultural and educational factors have a decisive influence on pain perception. Suffering is proposed to be defined as an unpleasant or even anguishing experience, severely affecting a person at a psychophysical and existential level. Pain and suffering are considered unpleasant. However, the provided definitions neither include the idea that pain and suffering can attack and even destroy the self nor the idea that they can constructively expand the self; both perspectives can b e equally useful for managing pain and suffering, but they are not defining features of the same. Including the existential dimension in the definition of suffering highlights the relevance of suffering in life and its effect on one’s own attachment to the world. An understanding of pain and suffering life experiences is proposed, meaning that they are considered aspects of a person’s life, and the self is the ever-changing sum of these experiences.ConclusionsThe provided definitions will be useful to the identification of pain and suffering, to the discussion of how to relieve them, and to a better understanding of how they are expressed and experienced. They lay the groundwork for further research in all these areas, with the twofold aim of a) avoiding epistemological mistakes and moral injustices, and b) highlighting the limitations of medicine in the treatment of suffering and pain. (shrink)

I offer a new objectivist theory of the contents of color language and color experience, intended especially as an account of what normal intersubjective variation in color perception and classification shows about those contents. First I explain an abstract account of the contents of color and other gradable adjectives; on the account, these contents are certain objective properties constituted in part by contextually intended standards of application, which are in turn values in the dimensions of variation associated with the adjectives. (...) Then I propose an explanation of normal variations in linguistic color classification; these are postulated to be effects of differences in intended standards for the color adjectives appearing in the classifying predicates. Next, I consider a potential objection to this explanation, based on the suggestion that contextual content should be more accessible than the explanation predicts. In reply, I point out that contextual content is occasionally opaque to unsophisticated reflection. Finally, I present a companion account of the contents of color experiences on which these represent an object as lying on certain salient intervals in the chromatic dimensions, and I show how the account accommodates intersubjective variation in color perception. (shrink)

Working memory is a foundational construct of cognitive psychology, where it is thought to be a capacity that enables us to keep information in mind and to use that information to support goal directed behavior. Philosophers have recently employed working memory to explain central cognitive processes, from consciousness to reasoning. In this paper, I show that working memory cannot meet even a minimal account of natural kindhood, as the functions of maintenance and manipulation of information that tie working memory models (...) and theories together do not have a coherent or univocal realizer in the brain. As such, working memory cannot explain central cognition. Rather, I argue that working memory merely redescribes its target phenomenon, and in doing so it obfuscates relevant distinctions amongst the many ways that brains like ours retain and transform information in the service of cognition. While this project ultimately erodes the explanatory role that working memory has played in our understanding of cognition, it simultaneously prompts us to evaluate the function of natural kinds within cognitive science, and signals the need for a productive pessimism to frame our future study of cognitive categories. (shrink)

A recent flurry of philosophical research on microaggression suggests that there are various practical and moral reasons why microaggression may be objectionable, including that it can be offensive, cause epistemic harms, express demeaning messages about certain members of our society, and help to reproduce an oppressive social order. Yet little attention has been given to the question of whether microaggression is also epistemically objectionable. This paper aims to further our understanding of microaggression by appealing to recent work on moral encroachment—the (...) idea that knowledge is sensitive to the moral stakes of believing—to argue that microaggression can be irrational in a distinctively epistemic sense, as it can involve relying on an epistemically unwarranted belief. This view suggests that the notion of epistemic justification may come apart from the notion of epistemic blame. (shrink)

Abordar el tema del hombre es de suyo arriesgado, teniendo en cuenta que su dinámica de búsqueda constante limita la reflexión filosófica al campo de los hechos históricos; cabe afirmar también que toda acción humana, tratada con cierto rigor y sistematicidad requiere acudir a la filosofía para indagar, entre otras cosas, por sus fundamentos. Este es el caso del proceso educativo, una realidad que involucra al hombre en sociedad y le ofrece las bases para tomar conciencia de su “ser persona”; (...) así, la antropología filosófica se postula como la reflexión sobre el hombre desde su realidad dinámica e interpersonal de relación consigo mismo y con el entorno que le rodea. Es necesario, pues, buscar el marco argumentativo del hecho y del discurso que constituyen el proceso educativo, labor propia de la filosofía de la educación, y caracterizada como “el saber racional y crítico de las condiciones de posibilidad de la realidad experimental educativa en su conjunto” (Fullat, 1992, pp. 89-90). Desde esta doble perspectiva, se considerarán los fundamentos del proceso educativo. (shrink)

The main aim of this paper is to point out that Davidsonian and Fregean theories of quotation do not accommodate certain facts about disquotation. A second aim is to dispel some errors of interpretation in a common Davidsonian reading of Tarski's claims about quotation. This allows a correct exegesis of Tarski's view, which is then seen not to be affected by the arguments usually adduced against the view wrongly attributed to Tarski. Finally, a Tarskian view is proposed of some problems (...) about quotation not addressed by Tarski. (shrink)

In current Western societies, increasing numbers of people express their desire to choose when to die. Allowing people to choose the moment of their death is an ethical issue that should be embedded in sound clinical and legal frameworks. In the case of persons with dementia, it raises further ethical questions such as: Does the person have the capacity to make the choice? Is the person being coerced? Who should be involved in the decision? Is the person’s suffering untreatable? The (...) use of Advance Euthanasia Directives (AED) is suggested as a way to deal with end-of-life wishes of persons with dementia. However, in the Netherlands—the only country in which this practice is legal—the experiences of patients, doctors, and relatives have been far from satisfactory.Our paper analyses this complex ethical challenge from a Dignity-Enhancing Care approach, starting from the Dutch experiences with AED as a case. We first consider the lived experiences of the different stakeholders, seeking out a dialogical-interpretative understanding of care. We aim to promote human dignity as a normative standard for end-of-life care practices. Three concrete proposals are then presented in which this approach can be operationalised in order to deal respectfully with the end-of-life choices of persons with dementia. (shrink)

Abstract: I address the issue of how pretence emerged in evolution by reviewing the (mostly negative) evidence about pretend behaviour in non-human primates, and proposing a model of the type of information processing abilities that humans had to evolve in order to be able to pretend. Non-human primates do not typically pretend: there are just a few examples of potential pretend actions mostly produced by apes. The best, but still rare, examples are produced by so-called 'enculturated' apes (reared by humans) (...) and among them specially those that have been systematically trained to use symbols (so-called 'linguistic' apes). A hypothesis that would explain the lack of pretence in apes is that they lack the mentalistic ability of theory of mind. However, in the last years apes have been demonstrated to possess relatively sophisticated social cognitive skills, some of them ontogenetically appearing in humans alongside with or even after pretend play. As a solution to the paradox, I discuss a model according to which pretence is supported by a mechanism capable of computing intentional relations with non-existing objects or properties (Intentional non-existence), as opposed to mechanisms computing intentional relations with existing, although not necessarily currently perceived, objects (Intentional availability). Apes possess the latter, which allows them to solve a variety of theory of mind tasks, but not the former, which typically prevents them from developing pretence. (shrink)

This paper presents some difficulties for Timothy Williamson's epistemicist view of vagueness and for an argument he gives in its defense. First, I claim that the argument, which uses the notion of an "omniscient speaker", is question-begging. Next, I argue that some presumably true scientific hypotheses, which postulate certain relations between everyday vague predicates and scientific predicates, make the central theses of epistemicism highly implausible. Finally, I show that the "margin for error principles" used by Williamson to explain away the (...) kind of ignorance conjectured by epistemicism lead to new sorites-like arguments with unacceptable conclusions. (shrink)

This article explores the relationality between women’s bodies and selfies on NSFW (Not Safe For Work) tumblr blogs. We consider the way selfie practices engage with normative, ageist and sexist assumptions of the wider culture in order to understand how specific ways of looking become possible. Women’s experiences of their bodies change through interactions, sense of community and taking and sharing selfies. This article provides an empirical elaboration on what sexy selfies are and do by analysing interviews, selfies and blog (...) content of nine women in the NSFW self-shooters community on tumblr. For our participants, self-shooting is an engaged, self-affirmative and awareness raising pursuit, where their body, through critically self-aware self-care, emerges as agentic, sexual and distinctly female. Thus, this is a reading of selfies as a practice of freedom. (shrink)