Philosophy and "Trans" Ideology: Stock and Bettcher: And Another Thing...
When philosophers (usually under cover of feminism) do have the temerity to criticize "trans" ideology, one of the pat responses is: you aren't permitted to do so because you haven't read / don't understand enough of the pro-trans literature. Thing is, that stuff just isn't very good. It's not like there's this untapped treasure trove of knowledge and incisive argument laying around, unread, that decisively backs up their view. Compare Bettcher and Stock: Stock's arguments are generally straightforward and reasonable. The more specifically feminist they get, the less so... But many of her arguments have been obvious to everyone ever since TI appeared on the scene. Bettcher's arguments are the thinnest of gruel, basically all the way through. (And Bettcher was supposed to produce a second-half of the essay...I'm not sure that ever even happened.)
Any even half-way competent graduate student should be able to clearly explain the glaring weaknesses of the pro-trans arguments (e.g. conflating "I feel like I'm x" with "I'm x"). These are not difficult issues. It's not a mind-stultifying toss-up. Free will and determinism this ain't...
What has philosophy contributed to this debate? It's obfuscated a fairly clear and simply set of questions, and joined in creating social pressure that has pretended them from being openly and rationally discussed. Behold, the heirs of Socrates.
posted by Winston Smith at
9:33 AM
5 Comments:
Hey, stay safe this weekend. Chapel Hill should be safe enough, but still--lot of trees down, flooding, power out. Do stock up a bit, and plan on using gas heat, even just a Coleman stove.
Thanks man. Though I'm not in Chapel Hill anymore, I may still be in the path. Though I think it's tracking away from us now.
Good to hear. That doesn't mean that a couple bags of ice, some rock salt, and a bit of high test (no-ethanol) gas (or butane, depending on your camp stove) would be a bad investment. Hurricane lamps (the ones with a mantle, not just an old fashioned kerosine lamp) are great to have, too. Mantle lamp is about 10x brighter than a plain wick lamp.
Hm, interesting... We have so many flashlights we never even think of anything else.
Florence looks to be tracking *well* south of us now, though.
Pressurized mantle lights are astonishingly bright--about like a 40-60W regular bulb. Easily bright enough to read by, etc. They are a great investment if you have to worry about long power outages (or if you are car or canoe camping. They're too heavy for a backpack.) Glad you are out of the main line, tho still do expect plenty of wind and rain. The trouble with being near the edge of a hurricane is there is power out everywhere, and it may take a long time to get to an otherwise easily-fixed outage. Happened to us in Irene.
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