More on Transanity: The Stock Dust-Up Hits IHE
Colleen Flaherty, "By Any Other Name"
Pro-"trans" philosophy is a train wreck. Feminist / gender philosophy generally isn't very good. You can't really serve two masters, and that stuff is extremely politicized. It typically aims to bolster some flavor of leftist politics, and so, by the standards of real philosophy, it's pretty thin gruel. Starting with immovable political commitments--like starting with immovable religious ones--radically impedes your ability to honestly seek the truth.
There are a zillion things to say about this crazy dust-up, but I'll just point out a couple. First, the problem at issue is basically (to extend the concept) iatrogenic. It was basically generated out of the academic swamp of women's studies and feminist philosophy. There's never been any good reason to believe that men can become women by acting like them. The weaker regions of academia worked themselves into a tangle of confusions because they're cultishly committed to a tangle of bad politics and bad philosophy (more accurately: literary criticism). The postpostmodern mishmash has wrecked huge swaths of the humanities and social sciences. It never helps, never brings understanding or enlightenment. All it does is sow ignorance and confusion. Nothing about the embarrassing clusterhump at issue here is in any way surprising given the state of the Weaker Regions.
The only other thing I'll say is: it's telling that the issue is finally being raised publicly by a dissenting feminist. And it's being represented, primarily, as a question of harm to non-"transgendered" women. If an ordinary straight dude had stood up and made the ordinary philosophical objections to the theory, he'd have been fucking crucified. That the objection is coming from a "gender critical" feminist is important. On this issue, the "gender critical" view is--so far as its most important objections go--just the commonsense view: man and woman are biological kinds. But the commonsense view of the matter--the view that every child knows is true--has been completely silenced. The objections can only be raised--years late--because they are represented as feminist criticisms.
Finally, note how desperate the pro-"trans" side is to deflect attention away from the central question: Are "trans women" women? They know they simply cannot win that debate if it is conducted in even vaguely sane terms. Many of them have even given up trying. Instead, they try to marginalize the question by asserting--absurdly--that it doesn't really matter, that it's peripheral, that only the ignorant would take it to be importance. (Or, alternative, that it's so monumentally difficult that no one but "experts"*--such as themselves--should dare try to understand it.) That's ridiculous--but it is, actually, a view endorsed by the postpostmodern mishmash: political questions are prior to factual / descriptive ones. That shows that their argument is not unprincipled--but at the expense of showing that their central commitments are idiotic.
*As I've said before: it's not even clear that there really are experts in this sort of thing. And even if there are: expertise in the humanities and soft social sciences is very different than expertise in other disciplines. A chemist is likely to have actual knowledge of chemistry; an "expert" on "gender" mostly just knows what other people have said about gender; in fact, a contemporary "expert" on gender is likely to believe fewer truths and more outrageous falsehoods about it than a randomly-selected person off the street.
Pro-"trans" philosophy is a train wreck. Feminist / gender philosophy generally isn't very good. You can't really serve two masters, and that stuff is extremely politicized. It typically aims to bolster some flavor of leftist politics, and so, by the standards of real philosophy, it's pretty thin gruel. Starting with immovable political commitments--like starting with immovable religious ones--radically impedes your ability to honestly seek the truth.
There are a zillion things to say about this crazy dust-up, but I'll just point out a couple. First, the problem at issue is basically (to extend the concept) iatrogenic. It was basically generated out of the academic swamp of women's studies and feminist philosophy. There's never been any good reason to believe that men can become women by acting like them. The weaker regions of academia worked themselves into a tangle of confusions because they're cultishly committed to a tangle of bad politics and bad philosophy (more accurately: literary criticism). The postpostmodern mishmash has wrecked huge swaths of the humanities and social sciences. It never helps, never brings understanding or enlightenment. All it does is sow ignorance and confusion. Nothing about the embarrassing clusterhump at issue here is in any way surprising given the state of the Weaker Regions.
The only other thing I'll say is: it's telling that the issue is finally being raised publicly by a dissenting feminist. And it's being represented, primarily, as a question of harm to non-"transgendered" women. If an ordinary straight dude had stood up and made the ordinary philosophical objections to the theory, he'd have been fucking crucified. That the objection is coming from a "gender critical" feminist is important. On this issue, the "gender critical" view is--so far as its most important objections go--just the commonsense view: man and woman are biological kinds. But the commonsense view of the matter--the view that every child knows is true--has been completely silenced. The objections can only be raised--years late--because they are represented as feminist criticisms.
Finally, note how desperate the pro-"trans" side is to deflect attention away from the central question: Are "trans women" women? They know they simply cannot win that debate if it is conducted in even vaguely sane terms. Many of them have even given up trying. Instead, they try to marginalize the question by asserting--absurdly--that it doesn't really matter, that it's peripheral, that only the ignorant would take it to be importance. (Or, alternative, that it's so monumentally difficult that no one but "experts"*--such as themselves--should dare try to understand it.) That's ridiculous--but it is, actually, a view endorsed by the postpostmodern mishmash: political questions are prior to factual / descriptive ones. That shows that their argument is not unprincipled--but at the expense of showing that their central commitments are idiotic.
*As I've said before: it's not even clear that there really are experts in this sort of thing. And even if there are: expertise in the humanities and soft social sciences is very different than expertise in other disciplines. A chemist is likely to have actual knowledge of chemistry; an "expert" on "gender" mostly just knows what other people have said about gender; in fact, a contemporary "expert" on gender is likely to believe fewer truths and more outrageous falsehoods about it than a randomly-selected person off the street.
posted by Winston Smith at
2:19 PM
2 Comments:
I would point out that *of course* at least some feminists are pissed off about this. They got title IX after long and hard work. Women's sports are an uncomfortably good consequence. And now transgender athletes are jumping in and waltzing off with trophies after first developing their strength with testosterone--which is otherwise banned in women's sports. Of course this is completely unfair. And yeah, female athletes aren't happy either.
I really think this is a point that's likely to make a difference. You start messing with female athletes, you're asking for trouble. They're often focused and driven (and have wealthy, focused, driven parents). They have invested enormous chunks of time and energy into their sport. It's no longer a matter of mere words; it's a matter of something that matters to people.
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