by Daniel A. Kaufman
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A to B: “You’re an asshole.”
B to A: “No I’m not.”
A to B: “Well, it’s not up to you whether you’re an asshole or not. It’s up to everyone else.”
—Louis CK (1)
The “self-made man” traditionally was someone who had made his own fortune, rather than inheriting it Today, many would point out that by ‘men’ we surely mean people, which seems perfectly reasonable, while others (more regrettably) would tell us not to speak of anyone as being “self-made,” because we are all connected to and dependent on one another and all make use of publicly supported infrastructure. This latter point is true, if you take ‘self-made’ and ‘dependent’ in a literal, deadpan sorts of way, but as these notions are commonly understood, it is clearly false, as there is an obvious and meaningful difference between, say, a person who starts and owns a business and the son or daughter who inherits it or the employee who works in it. The rhetorical purpose behind the admonition is to suggest that some richer, cooler, more successful or otherwise better-off (than you) person doesn’t deserve what he or she has or at least, doesn’t deserve to be too proud of it or talk about it too much. Hence Hillary Clinton (remember her?) and “It takes a village” and Barack Obama and his “You didn’t build that!” each of which, in its own way, was an effort to deflate claims of personal achievement and thereby undermine ascriptions of desert or lack thereof. Of course, this attitude has an equally distasteful counterpart, in the view that those who are not self-made or who have been unsuccessful in one way or another and require assistance deserve what they get and either should not be helped or should be publicly shamed for asking for and receiving it.
It is a bit weird, though, now that I think about it, because for the most part, being self-made is all the rage today. That is, aside from those self-important, thankless jerks who are too proud of or claim too much credit for some achievement or other, our reaction to people who insist that they are self-made in virtually every other respect is largely congratulatory and in many quarters swooning. Indeed, so cherished are some of these forms of self-madeness (madedness?) that to deny them or even express mild doubts about them will earn you a savaging, at best, and at worst, all manner of administrative sanctions and even sometimes legal penalties. I am thinking in particular of the still-unfolding madness involving “preferred gender pronouns” and the legal sanctions that have been proposed (or already exist) for failing to use them, but one might also consider the recent “Hypatia fiasco,” in which a clearly progressively-minded scholar published a paper in the feminist philosophy journal Hypatia, suggesting that since race is as much a social construct as gender, perhaps we shouldn’t be any more put-off by people claiming to be transracial than by their claiming to be transgender. She was immediately and viciously set upon not only by trans activists but by the journal’s own associate editors, who demanded the paper be retracted, despite the fact that it had passed peer review. (2) Confusions abound throughout these emotionally fraught situations and events – more on that in a bit – but what interests me the most about the matter of self-madeness lies beneath rather than in any particular instantiation of it, the contemporary versions of which, in my view, simply represent the modern notion of the self taken to its logical extremes.
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In the pre-modern worlds of classical antiquity and medieval Europe, a person’s identity would be defined in terms of his or her social relationships and roles. As Alasdair MacIntyre described it in After Virtue:
In … pre-modern, traditional societies it is through his or her membership in a variety of social groups that the individual identifies himself or herself and is identified by others. I am brother, cousin and grandson, member of this household, that village, this tribe… (3)
Indeed, it was precisely this publicly defined self that made it possible to straightforwardly, factually ground evaluative judgments ascribed to the person in question. Who and what one was, as a person, was a publicly verifiable fact, and thus, whether one was a good or bad person of the sort one was – and even morally – was also a publicly verifiable fact:
From such factual premises as “He gets a better yield for this crop per acre than any farmer in the district,” “He has the most effective programme of soil renewal yet known” and “His dairy herd wins all the first prizes at the agricultural shows,” the evaluative conclusion validly follows that “He is a good farmer.”
[This] argument is valid because of the special character of the concept of [a farmer]. Such concepts are functional concepts; that is to say, we define ‘farmer in terms of the purpose or function which … a farmer [is] characteristically expected to serve.
[M]oral arguments within the classical, Aristotelian tradition – whether in its Greek or medieval versions – involve at least one central functional concept, the concept of man understood as having an essential nature and an essential purpose or function … ‘Man’ stands to ‘good man’ as … [‘farmer’ stands to ‘good farmer’]. (4)
This conception of self and identity is fundamentally transformed in the modern era, where – most notably in Descartes and Locke – it is defined in terms of one’s internal consciousness: that is, in terms of one’s private mental states – one’s experiences, beliefs, desires, and significantly for Locke, one’s memories.
[W]e must consider what person stands for; which, I think, is a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places; which it does only by that consciousness which is inseparable from thinking, and, as it seems to me, essential to it: it being impossible for any one to perceive without perceiving that he does perceive. When we see, hear, smell, taste, feel, meditate, or will anything, we know that we do so. Thus it is always as to our present sensations and perceptions: and by this every one is to himself that which he calls self … For, since consciousness always accompanies thinking, and it is that which makes every one to be what he calls self, and thereby distinguishes himself from all other thinking things, in this alone consists personal identity, i.e. the sameness of a rational being: and as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person; it is the same self now it was then; and it is by the same self with this present one that now reflects on it, that that action was done. (5)
Thus, while a modern person would not deny any number of identifications that derive from one’s social connections and roles, the question of one’s true self – of who one really is – can only be defined from within.
MacIntyre’s interest in this story is that therein lies the origin of the is/ought gap. From the old, teleological conception of the self, there was no difficulty in moving from how a person is to how he ought to be, given that how he is and how he ought to be are both functionally defined, according to publicly accessible criteria. But with the modern notion of the self defined entirely in terms of a person’s private mental states, how the person is isn’t functionally defined, according to public criteria, and thus, any notion of how he ought to be, other than as determined by him, clearly would seem to be unwarranted. My own interest, though related, is slightly different. From this new version of the self is born a distinctive sort of potential resentment; one in which any effort to assign a person an identity not of his or her choosing or to resist or even reject one of his or her choosing, becomes grounds for serious offense. And when combined with a culture in which offense is routinely – and in my view, often deliberately and thus, quite cynically – conflated with explicit, tangible harm, you have a recipe for social, administrative, and legal sanctions of the sort we find ourselves confronted with today.
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I doubt that the older conception of the self can be revived or even that doing so is desirable. The new conception is embedded in a number of fundamental, modern institutions and forms of life that virtually all of us would be loath to give up and lies at the heart of a number of key ideas we have about ourselves that it is hard to imagine dismantling.
The modern self is, at bottom, an emancipatory concept. That one’s identity should be publicly defined in terms of relations to others that are more often than not involuntary was manifested, historically, in very tangibly oppressive caste systems (and still is in places, around the globe), where one’s class, one’s profession – pretty much one’s entire life – were determined by the accident of one’s birth. That one should be able to become anything, at least in principle – that You could even be President! as we often tell our young – is something that relies, essentially, upon the modern conception of the self (and much more, of course). You don’t get liberal democracy without it, and you don’t get the modern conception of autonomy – upon which liberal democracy and modern ethics depends – without it. Indeed, those like Descartes and Kant would argue that you cannot even have intellectual and cultural enlightenment without it. As Descartes wrote in the Discourse on Method:
I was persuaded that it would indeed be preposterous for a private individual to think of reforming a state by fundamentally changing it throughout, and overturning it in order to set it up amended; and the same I thought was true of any similar project for reforming the body of the sciences, or the order of teaching them established in the schools: but as for the opinions which up to that time I had embraced, I thought that I could not do better than resolve at once to sweep them wholly away, that I might afterwards be in a position to admit either others more correct, or even perhaps the same when they had undergone the scrutiny of reason. I firmly believed that in this way I should much better succeed in the conduct of my life, than if I built only upon old foundations, and leaned upon principles which, in my youth, I had taken upon trust. (6)
And as Kant so memorably put it in the pamphlet, “What Is Enlightenment?”:
Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another. The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding!
Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why such a large proportion of men, even when nature has long emancipated them from alien guidance (naturaliter maiorennes), nevertheless gladly remain immature for life. For the same reasons, it is all too easy for others to set themselves up as their guardians. It is so convenient to be immature! If I have a book to have understanding in place of me, a spiritual adviser to have a conscience for me, a doctor to judge my diet for me, and so on, I need not make any efforts at all. I need not think, so long as I can pay; others will soon enough take the tiresome job over for me. (7)
So I don’t see us going back to the pre-modern conception of the self or even wanting to. But the contemporary, radically “self-made” version has become an anxious parody of its noble, modern predecessor. A parody because it now extends to such patent absurdities as white people claiming they are black simply because they want to be – a la Rachel Dolezal – and anxious, because it reflects an almost pathological discomfort with any sort of givenness and thus, with any loss of control over one’s identity. What was a healthy desire to wrest authority from others over one’s economic, political, and even (to a degree) one’s social fortunes has been transformed into a need not only to micromanage every last bit of one’s public identity but to force others to accept it; something that has been both driven and exacerbated by the fact that so much of peoples’ public lives – and especially young peoples’ – are lived online, where this sort of hyperactive-self-control is not only possible but expected and even encouraged.
It is no accident, then, that it is young people who are most likely to feel such a desperate need to control their public identities and who are least likely to tolerate the fact that in a liberal society one’s public identities must be negotiated, at least if one is going to venture beyond the circle of one’s family, friends, and the like-minded. That so many young people today are happy to jettison liberalism – and even democracy – in order to force others to accept their public identities is a testament to how desperate they are that their chosen identities should be publicly sustained at any cost. (8)
Of course, there remain parts of our public identities with regard to which public negotiation is still expected and accepted. One cannot simply call oneself an attorney or a physician or an NBA player and expect others to accept such identifications, unless one has met certain publicly developed and managed criteria. But even these sorts of identities are beginning to dissolve at the edges. Is one an “artist” just because one says so or a “musician” or a “writer”? Is one any of these things if one engages in them but isn’t any good, as determined by the public’s reaction? Just a few decades ago, the obvious, overwhelming answer would have been “no.” Indeed, Joan Didion, in her (in)famous takedown of some of the more excessive versions of Second Wave Feminism in 1971, unmasked the essentially child-like dimension of a certain brand of feminist self-madeness:
More and more we have been hearing the wishful voices of just such perpetual adolescents, the voices of women scarred by resentment not of their class position as women but at the failure of their childhood expectations and misapprehensions. “Nobody ever so much as mentioned” to Susan Edmiston “that when you say ‘I do,’ what you are doing is not, as you thought, vowing your eternal love, but rather subscribing to a whole system of rights, obligations and responsibilities that may well be anathema to your most cherished beliefs.”
To Ellen Peck “the birth of children too often means the dissolution of romance, the loss of freedom, the abandonment of ideals to economics.” A young woman described on the cover of a recent issue of New York magazine as “the Suburban Housewife Who Bought the Promises of Women’s Lib and Came to the City to Live Them” tells us what promises she bought: “The chance to respond to the bright lights and civilization of the Big Apple, yes. The chance to compete, yes. But most of all, the chance to have some fun. Fun is what’s been missing.”
Eternal love, romance, fun. The Big Apple. These are relatively rare expectations in the arrangements of consenting adults, although not in those of children, and it wrenches the heart to read about these women in their brave new lives. An ex‐wife and mother of three speaks of her plan “to play out my college girl’s dream. I am going to New York to become this famous writer. Or this working writer. Failing that, I will get a job in publishing.” She mentions a friend, another young woman who “had never had any other life than as a daughter or wife or mother” but who is “just discovering herself to be a gifted potter.” The childlike resourcefulness— to get a job in publishing, to be a gifted potter—bewilders the imagination. (9)
But today, in a world of blogs and Photoshop and Pro Tools? One in which we lionize self-madeness? Not only are such claims routinely accepted with nary a blink or a chuckle (good natured or not), it is increasingly thought impolite or even terribly rude to react otherwise and one is likely to be deemed somewhat of an asshole if one does so. That this sort of informal social sanction is considered sufficient and that no one (yet) is proposing administrative codes or civil or criminal laws mandating that people publicly voice their acceptance of others’ self-identifications as artists or musicians or writers simply testifies to the fact that these identifications have not taken on the social, cultural, or personal significance that gender and racial identities have.
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It is understandable that racial and gender identities should be held more preciously and the desire that they be publicly acknowledged pressed with more vigor, though it is not immediately obvious and one easily could imagine things being otherwise (as they undoubtedly are with any number of individuals, whose souls burn with the conviction that they are artists or writers or musicians). But there is something puzzling about the current effort to publicly force these sorts of identifications, and it lies in the fact that the very terms in which they have been defined entail precisely the sort of public negotiation that people are insisting should not occur.
We are told that race and gender identity are “socially constructed” rather than biologically determined, and it is worth noticing what this does not say, which is that race and gender identity are personally or privately determined. Thus, when we say that gender is socially constructed, what we mean is that the gender roles and tropes associated with the physiological sexes are not in any way inherent or natural to those sexes, but rather, determined by social consensus; one that has evolved over the course of millennia. Certainly, they were determined neither by individuals or small groups of people, nor at a particular moment in time.
The proposal now is that these should be reconceived; that we should move away from the long, socially-established gender binaries, tied to the sexes, to fluid and shifting genders, unmoored from physiological sex, and for the sake of the discussion, let’s stipulate that the proposal is a sound one. Whatever the new consensus will be, it will have to be a consensus – that’s what socially constructed facts are grounded in – and this means it will have to be a matter of public negotiation. It also means that it will take a long time and that we will not be able to predict precisely what the consensus will be. It took the current consensus millennia to form, and while a new consensus certainly won’t take that long to develop, given modern modes of communication, it equally certainly will not happen overnight, as is evinced by the current public conversation on the subject.
I should point out that this is true, regardless of whether the new view of gender is supported by “the science,” whatever that currently is and wherever it goes. It’s not just that clinical gender dysphoria is exceedingly rare (and barely understood) or that the notion that the twenty or more percent of millennials and members of Generation Z who claim gender fluidity and “queerness” are clinically dysphoric strains all credulity (10), but that regardless, whether people, at large, in a free society, are going to publicly express acceptance of identities that are by every account socially constructed is ultimately going to depend upon whether they come to agree with those identifications. This seems like it would be obvious – a social construction is not self- but publicly made – and clearly it is, in the case of racial identity, as evinced by the near-ubiquitous rejection of Rachel Dolezal’s claims to be black, but one would never know it from the tenor of the current conversation regarding gender. That this has caused such a degree of distress that it has led so many to agitate on behalf of the most illiberal means possible to force such a consensus, immediately, clearly is due, in part, to the appalling treatment that so many transgender people experience, but I would maintain that it also is due to the extent to which self-madeness has not only captured, but defined the contemporary and especially the youthful imagination, regardless of whether it is expressed in an entirely consistent fashion.
Notes
Relevant portion begins at 1:50.
- http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/05/transracialism-article-controversy.html
- Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, p. 33.
- MacIntyre, After Virtue, p. 58.
- John Locke, “Of Identity and Diversity,” from An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. (1689) http://enlightenment.supersaturated.com/johnlocke/BOOKIIChapterXXVII.html
- Rene Descartes, Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking Truth in the Sciences. (1637)
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/59/59-h/59-h.htm#part2
- Immanuel Kant, “What Is Enlightenment?” (1784)
http://philosophy.eserver.org/kant/what-is-enlightenment.txt
http://www.newsweek.com/have-millennials-fallen-out-love-democracy-495080
- Joan Didion, “The Women’s Movement.” (1971)
http://www.nytimes.com/1972/07/30/archives/the-womens-movement-women.html
Comments
89 responses to “Self-Made”
Dan
An interesting – and complex – analysis, highlighting the inconsistencies in people’s thinking. Unlike you, I prefer to avert my gaze from this sort of thing and just hope that commonsense will prevail in the end.
“… while a modern person would not deny any number of identifications that derive from one’s social connections and roles, the question of one’s true self – of who one really is – can only be defined from within. […] From this new version of the self is born a distinctive sort of potential resentment; one in which any effort to assign a person an identity not of his or her choosing or to resist or even reject one of his or her choosing, becomes grounds for serious offense.”
This kind of potential resentment has only been actualized and politicized fairly recently, and only in certain places and amongst certain social groups.
I’ll start to get worried if it spreads to other social groups within America etc., and/or to countries like China. I don’t think this will happen because I think ordinary people are generally grounded in reality to a very large extent. Also, when things are laughable, people usually see it – and laugh.
So I’m optimistic that the extreme positions that you are focused on here will fade. I accept, however, that anti-liberal repression happens all the time to varying degrees, and bad and crazy situations *can* last for decades. I’m thinking of the Soviet Union, for example. The people knew how stupid it all was, how the official talk didn’t fit the reality. Thus the black humor, etc..
Dan.
Once again I find myself with Mark on an issue (despite our many differences), with this important caveat: I am not optimistic at all. I think the situation will get worse.
I have two friends in the academy, and two friends who retired from it, and two who just quit it. To be honest, I don’t know why you’re still in it. Nothing I hear of it invites anything but derision. I suggest investing in safe but rapidly expanding market. like marijuana; get out while the getting is good; and retire to write what you really want to.
The university system has not been the locale for intellectual progress for some decades.
Nonetheless, you’ve called attention to a substantive problem in the West. From a different perspective, a suggestion: When Hume claims the ‘self’ is a convenient fiction, he is only half right. The ‘self’ is a very inconvenient fiction. The Second Noble Truth tells us that it is the source of all our suffering.
Yet the West will have it so. And so we will continue to pursue our own suffering rather than letting go of it.
Because our language continues to refer to it. “I am this,” “I did this,” I know this,” “I know this” – we are always forced to assert our individuality, even when it gets us nothing but pain.
More directly on your point: These ‘transgender/ transsexuals’ are suffering. But they think that gives them a right to demand that others prevent their suffering, by simple re-positioning of syntax. No hope could be more vain. For that to happen they would also have to change semantics, and they can’t, and government or other authoritarian fiat will not get them this. The Soviet Union collapsed because the semantics of Russian (and related languages) just are what they are, and no authoritarian fiat could change that. Semantics changes organically, not by any any force. (Esperanto – the only truly dead language produced in the 20th century.)
Finally, and in the grossest sense – in any society with democratic pretensions (which is all we ae, at this point), a 0.5% minority has no right to demand anything at all of the 99.05 percent majority; and no dialectic – Hegelian, Marxist, Frankfort School, or Post-Modern – will ever get them that right. They can demand, they can bully – all they accomplish is embarrassing themselves.
As far as the Academy is concerned – glad I’m not there! If that’s what you face, good luck to you.
Gold is always a wise investment; retiring at an early age is actually lauded these days.
Those who can, do. Those who can’t, posture.
We each believe in our own worth but an ‘unkind’ world often fails to recognise our worth. And so we do two things.
First, we appropriate the symbols that reflect our belief in our own worth.
Second, we claim an identity that gives us worth.
After all, worth has no meaning unless recognised by others. and so we claim their recognition of our worth, through symbols and identity, instead of letting it be freely granted in recognition of our achievements. But this claim, in the absence of substance, must be asserted, loudly and stridently, and those who fail to recognise our claims must be discredited, lest we become overwhelmed by cognitive dissonance.
It is a childlike belief that symbols and identity can substitute for substance. But the childlike command disproportionate power in a consumer driven world since they are the future market and it is imperative to capture their loyalty in order to maintain future growth. And so we dance in obeisance to their whims and reinforce their fantasies. But we are not fools and understand the game better than they do.
I have no doubt whatsoever that trans people are suffering, for the reason I indicated in the essay: they are to a great extent treated quite miserably in our society, which is never just for any reason. No one should be treated to derision or abuse or subject to violence and cruelty.
My sole reason for mentioning the issue in this context is that I think it actually has been misappropriated by those who are not clinically gender dysphoric, but who have taken it up as a way of expressing self-madeness, which, as I explained, is actually a mistake. If gender does turn out to be entirely socially constructed, as people suggest — and there are those in psychology and biology who would deny this and say that it is a combination of biological and social factors — then it is a mistake to think of it in the framework of self-madeness. That which is socially constructed is a product of social consensus and cannot simply be declared, no matter how sincerely a person means it. People seem to understand this with race (which is also socially constructed), which is why they overwhelmingly have rejected Rachel Dolezal’s claims of blackness. Whatever the new meaning of ‘man’ and ‘woman’, in the gender-sense, will be in the future and which additional gender identities will be accepted — and which new pronouns will be added to the language — will be the result of an extended and contentious period of social negotation. That simply is the way that social construction works.
With respect to the self-made-self, of course, I also think that it is a mistake: a degraded version of the modern (i.e. Enlightenment) notion of the self. Like liberalism and democracy, with which the modern conception of the self is closely intertwined (also indicated in the essay), it is a fragile notion, sound in itself, but easily subject to the kind of deformation we see today.
“With respect to the self-made-self, … it is a fragile notion, sound in itself, but easily subject to the kind of deformation we see today.”
Agreed. It is interesting to consider why this should be so. EJ’s response was to call the ‘self’ a fiction. That is a notion that simply won’t fly.
So what is wrong with the self-made-self? I and all the mature people I know are self-made-selves. We seized our destiny and, like Henley in Invictus, we declared that we were the master of our fate, the captain of our souls(our fictional selves). We all do this but the key question is when we do this. Do this too early and the result is narcissistic disaster. Do it when properly prepared and the result is a useful, fulfilled life.
As infants we are entirely guided by our parents. As we become older we seize more independence and accept less guidance. But still we are subject to the strong guidance that prepares us for useful adult life. What has happened today is that parental and societal guidance has weakened(for all sorts of reasons) allowing youth to seize independence to define themselves while still unready and emotionally immature. The result is a shallow concept of the self, defined by appearance, sexuality, symbols and identity. It is fluid and readily re-defined because their experience of life is still fluid and subject to being re-defined.
Dan,
sorry for getting so whimsical in my comment. This problem, of how our language constructs our understanding of ourselves has challenged me for some time, and has recently bubbled up again. Also, I had just read about Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist who has become controversial for rejecting any effort to insist, by law or regulation, that we only use words (like “zhe” and “zher.”) that – what shall we really call them, cisgender, transgender, poly-gender? (it gets tiresome searching for the politically correct usage when there are so many available, each offending a different segment of society)- individuals choose for themselves. We cannot arbitrarily alter reality linguistically, especially not by law.
There are certainly people who feel and enact hostility towards those with different gender or sexuality issues, and we can certainly do something to persuade them to change their views while preventing them from engaging in outright harm of others. But insistence that reality be changed to favor the self of those with gender or sexuality issues shows little understanding of social reality and and no understanding of how complex the very basis of our sense of “self” really is.
There is a different, although similarly complex, understanding of what the “self” is and from whence it arises in the East, than in the West. This in itself tells us that “selfhood” is not a given by nature. Yet in the West we’ve come to accept the givenness of the “self” to the point of asserting it as rarefied and inviolable. (This despite the quite evident history of the very notion, which you discuss, riffing off MacIntyre.) You are quite right that this has given us one of the foundations of modern democratic politics. But it is also, as you note, “easily subject to the kind of deformation we see today.” And I think this trajectory is inevitable, and is itself the source of much suffering.
Hi EJ,
that was an interesting reference to Jordan Peterson:
https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2017/01/15/he-says-freedom-they-say-hate-the-pronoun-fight-is-back.html
I had no idea it was getting this bad.
Dan,
Excellent analysis.
I’ve been thinking about this since 2000, when I read an interesting philosophical essay about the difference between expressions like “I’m the social kind of guy” and “I’m 5’8” and 145 lbs.”
More and more I’m starting to think that the phenomenon of self-identification and self-madeness is another sign that so-called “progressive thinking” has reached a dead end. In some vague way, progressive people still feel that it’s possible to move to a society that is dynamic *and* fair, but they don’t have a clue how to get there. So some of them quietly or not so quietly moved their focus from the right to a fair deal to the right to self-identification. Both are guaranteed to rile the conservatives, so in a certain sense they look the same.
I’m not saying that progressives shouldn’t defend the rights of transgender people – they should. I’m saying that too many progressives are taking the easy way out. They are intellectually too lazy to contemplate the subtle and difficult issues linked to self-identification as a certain gender or a certain race. They simply use their defense of self-identification as an easy way to keep their progressive status intact.
Hi Dan:
A very nice discussion — but I find it puzzling as well as stimulating. Here’s why.
You bring together ideas of individual autonomy and social embeddedness, focusing on tensions between them. The problem seems to be: how can I be a free agent if I can’t choose my own identity? One kind of thinker (Sartre, say) contends that I can’t be free if other people control who I am. Another kind (MacIntyre perhaps) asserts that my individual identity has to be a social identity if it is to be anything. You agree with the second stance, and you think (like MacIntyre maybe) that modern societies have fostered the illusion of the first sort of freedom, to our detriment. Is that a correct summary?
You admit the case of the would-be transracialist is too idiosyncratic (a “parody”) to show what you really want to show. So what would show it? You give the Joan Didion snippets of privileged young women having trouble adjusting to the realities of marriage, parenthood and work. I can smile at those stories because I remember having to make similar adjustments, which felt huge at the time but I got through it somehow. You observe that social categories like “artist” today lack sharp boundaries, unlike “physician” — but, you say, even those sharp boundaries are getting blurred these days. (Are they?)
The question I am leading to is: what can I take away from your discussion? My life seems to be socially embedded all day every day. I no longer wish for any kind of asocial freedom, except for occasional holidays from everyday demands. I’d be happy to be a “good farmer” (or whatever) in just the sense you describe. I imagine (but I could be wrong) that you and the other commentators here are just like me in these respects. So what have I (or we) to learn from this? Is there something here I am missing?
Your quote from Kant is suggestive but still puzzling:
“Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why such a large proportion of men, even when nature has long emancipated them from alien guidance (naturaliter maiorennes), nevertheless gladly remain immature for life. For the same reasons, it is all too easy for others to set themselves up as their guardians. It is so convenient to be immature! If I have a book to have understanding in place of me, a spiritual adviser to have a conscience for me, a doctor to judge my diet for me, and so on, I need not make any efforts at all. I need not think, so long as I can pay; others will soon enough take the tiresome job over for me.”
He’s targeting people like me (or us) — but why? Because we rely on books or authorities or advisers too much? Because we buy in expertise, instead of thinking for ourselves. But do we? And is he saying we should do without expertise? Kant at least is describing a key fact about modern life, its deep reliance on specialisation. Presumably this reliance could cause a problem at the level of personal identity (Adam Smith thought so too). But I’m still not clear exactly what the problem is. Am I (are we) “immature for life”?
Alan
“[took the] current consensus millennia to form, and while a new consensus certainly won’t take that long to develop, given modern modes of communication, it equally certainly will not happen overnight.”
I see the arguments, but aren’t they just as applicable to all the social changes since the 1960’s in the West? Public acceptance of homosexuality, women’s rights, same sex marriage, heterodox religious belief – all the overturning of millennia of precedence? When Kant has it that the only requirement for being a citizen is “being one’s own master”, “…apart from the natural [requirement] (that one [es] is not a child, not a woman)” – how many generations in the West since that would be an acceptable sentiment, let alone elsewhere in the modern world?
As to second wave feminism, much of their stance comes from their political diagnosis of the Patriarchy as the problem (“Since male supremacy is the historical source of battering, and class domination perpetuates male privilege, a long-range plan to end abuse includes a total restructuring of society that is feminist, anti-racist, and socialist.” ;)).
The Didion quote reminds me of Stella Gibbons in Cold Comfort Farm [1932]:
Zher and zhe is just the next natural step for those who thought gender-neutral language encourages equality of the sexes. You might think (as EJ implies above) that such Sapir-Whorfian engineering is completely ineffective, so that Old in-your-face sexism has been just replaced by the “New Sexism”, or you might believe that 30 years of it might have contributed to an improvement in the status of women with covert New Sexism being less effective. It seems to me that this is actually an empirical question.
As to gender fluidity, I blame David Bowie.
Hi Dan, this is an interesting and well written piece, but I’m going to take a day or two to consider a longer response to it and commentary.
I have come to loathe people who are purportedly “self-made” in the sense that you start out with, as I have yet to find one (either self-described or that by others) that does not have all the negative qualities you describe:
“aside from those self-important, thankless jerks who are too proud of or claim too much credit for some achievement or other”
… which has always seemed intertwined with and the very reason why anyone makes “self-made” attributions…
“[a] view that those who are not self-made or who have been unsuccessful in one way or another and require assistance deserve what they get and either should not be helped or should be publicly shamed for asking for and receiving it.”
The historical analysis of the change in how one perceives (or receives? creates?) self identifiers was a nice shift and somewhat useful for me to mull over. It would seem like Kant supports the very argument I make above. Presumably there is no “standing on the shoulders of giants” humility for him, and anyone that does is a lazy bastard.
Perhaps one can just as easily see the shift from ancient to modern view as a sociological product in the fact that in the past there were communities one was a part of…and the community *needed* you to do well to prosper itself… whereas the emerging modern world needed “individuals” that could be swapped in or out as needed to serve the interests of “self-made” men… the people who should be served because they are better (more self-made) than you. There is an irony that personal intellectual emancipation was coupled with cutting free our need to support others in the community (now that we’re all individuals, equally capable of taking care of ourselves) and a drive to quash as much intellectual freedom and growth as we could to turn people into cogs in a hyper-specialized, industrial and service economy. Basically we want self-servicing robots, catering to the needs of the “self-made” billionaires.
Where I had some problems was the shift from discussions of self-made (economic/intellectual) to the subject of current social movements… particularly related to sexual/gender identity. These seem like slightly different things, and the differences important. Trans-identities (intersex or transgender) predate the modern West. This is not something that sprang from the enlightenment, even if cultural and technological changes since then have produced a social movement about those issues. And the idea that it is imagination driven (pure self-ascription, almost whimsy) seems problematic.
So I will think about it and write a longer response on that last topic.
Dwayne: With regard to the last point, I did suggest that gender identity is misidentified as self made.
Alan:
If you read my earlier piece on free will, you’ll know that I don’t think being a free agent means any more than being able to act or not act on the basis of reasons. If you can go to the mall, because there are cute girls there, you are a free agent.
At the heart of the essay is the following line of thought: (1) The modern conception of the Self brings the individual more control over his or her identity than had previously been the case; (2) Nonetheless, many elements of one’s identity still require public negotiation; (3) The contemporary view of the self endeavors to assert total/complete control over one’s identity and rejects any notion of social negotiation, even those elements of identity that are, *by definition* social constructs; (4) this is unsound and doomed to failure; (5) this is a symptom of a profound anxiety that is exacerbated by many elements of the current age and especially social media.
Hi EJ,
“Nonetheless, you’ve called attention to a substantive problem in the West. From a different perspective, a suggestion: When Hume claims the ‘self’ is a convenient fiction, he is only half right. The ‘self’ is a very inconvenient fiction. The Second Noble Truth tells us that it is the source of all our suffering.”
I find it difficult to agree with you but still it is interesting to find out why you think this way. In the last essay you mentioned the book by Morse Peckham(Explanation and Power) as having a large influence on you. So I promptly went out and got the book. It is really quite fascinating. From the introduction:
Hmm, that is quite a depressing view that “defines the individual as a mere cultural precipitate, a randomly assembled package of behavioral patterns, held together by a “mental construct,” that is, a persistent semiotic transformation.”
Even more depressing is his conclusion that “all notions of a decent society, or of a redemptive paradise,…are illusory and damaging to what chance for success the human enterprise may have;“.
I have a more hopeful frame of mind but it is interesting to examine the sources that influenced you.
Labnut: There is nothing wrong with self-madeness in the sense that I begin the essay with. But if by self-made you mean that there is no aspect of your public identity that requires social negotiation — i.e. that you just get to declare it and everyone else must accept it — that strikes me not just as false but as fundamentally neurotic.
Dan-K,
“There is nothing wrong with self-madeness in the sense that I begin the essay with.”
Agreed. But I qualify that by stating that the process demands a degree of preparedness and maturity.
“But if by self-made you mean that there is no aspect of your public identity that requires social negotiation”
No, that is not what I meant.
Agreed. But I qualify that by stating that the process demands a degree of preparedness and maturity.
= = =
Absolutely. Otherwise, you’re just a jerk about success.
labnut,
Actually, I found Peckham’s ideas quite liberating. And the Second Noble Truth (there is a source of suffering, and it is the self) is a Buddhist precept.
Peckham’s account of social construction is deflationary of any Utopian hope; and Utopian promises are common among both Enlightenment and Romantic thinkers (and were widely believed during the ‘Cultural Revolution’ when Peckham engaged his principle professional research). So much of what Peckham writes is an unraveling of the bases of such hopes, particularly that of the fully autonomous individual who can reason through to a truth independent of the history of that reasoning, or who ‘feels’ a truth separable from social influence. *
However, Peckham has his own defense of individual experience as his conclusion makes clear:
“The behavioral individual is the precipitate of semiosis and culture and redundancies and institutions and ultimate sanctions; he is the irreducible surd of existence, the fundamental incoherence of human life, for he cannot but strive with all his might, with all his aggressiveness, for stability; and yet at the same time he is the only source for that randomization from which issue emergent innovations – which if they cannot eliminate can at least modify, and not infrequently for the better, our fictive and normative absurdities of explanation.”
That being the case, the healthiest society will be that which tolerates the greatest cultural innovations among individuals while maintaining enough stability to avoid resort to violence. **
Such a view makes living in a messy collective like the United States much easier.
Meanwhile, Buddhism offers a different resolution (the Third Noble Truth – the self can be deconstructed; the Fourth Noble Truth, the means of this deconstruction – the Eight-fold Path) – but this is getting far afield from the present discussion. I only mention it to note a completely different view of self-hood than we’ve inherited from the Enlightenment. (Notably, there are no earthly Utopias offered by any Eastern philosophy or religion; that had to be imported from Germany and Russia, and has been unraveling ever since. The Chinese no longer talk about ‘global revolution,’ but about ‘globalization’ (in the market sense). That may or may not be a good thing, but is at least somewhat closer to acceptance of the world as it is.)
_ -_- _- _- _
* Are not our SJWs demanding that we hand them paradise on a platter? We’re all supposed to provide them with an instantly ‘safe’ world in which to realize their reasoned or felt self-hood? Now, and without the messy to-do of social negotiation about which Dan writes?
** Basically a defense, along one line of Pragmatist thought, for the social contract – as understood by Hobbes, not Locke or Rousseau.
This was a thought provoking essay with much to ponder.
We develop from a unique biological base yet we are embedded from the start within a mostly shared socio-cultural environment. It seems wrong to me then to think of a conventional self in either purely self-made or culturally enforced terms. I don’t think we can dis-entangle these sources into identifiable self-parts.
I agree with Dan that an ongoing negotiation ( self within culture ) is inevitable. I believe this is an important part of our basic skilled coping with the world. I have sympathies with with EJ, that in the west we place too much emphasis on a self-reliant individuality that requires these days not only an identity, but also a brand. I think we place to little emphasis on the concept of interdependence. When we cling to strongly to fixed identities in the name of self-definition I think we blind ourselves to influence culture has in directing that process. That said, however we conceptualize the self, I do think it is important to have a sense of autonomy and genuineness as a base from which we navigate the world.
I am thinking of Wittgenstein-
‘at the core of all well founded beliefs lie beliefs that are unfounded’.
and
“The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something—because it is always before one’s eyes.) The real foundations of his enquiry do not strike a man at all. Unless that fact has at some time struck him.—And this means: we fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most striking and most powerful”
These quotes strike me as pointing to how easy it can be to become misdirected or blind to that which is really motivating or actions and beliefs.
Any how, thanks Dan.
davidlduffy,
I’ll assume you know that there are genderless languages, and that this hasn’t prevented gender domination in those societies. Language is essential to social control, but not determinant. Whenever someone remarks to me ‘knowledge is power,’ I like to remind them of Mao’s dictum, “power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Or a healthy bank account. Power is power. It involves language but is not reducible to it.
Mere syntax is powerless. On the other hand, consider: the Western courtesy expected of a man, that he opens a door for a woman, presents us with a signification, a gestural semantics, a physical grammar. so to speak, of respect and deferment, without which feminism in the West may very well have not developed.
davidlduffy,
also, David Bowie (and he was not alone),\ was merely bringing into public notice the sexual ambiguity that many adolescents felt at the time, and which had previously been denied.
It all comes down to expectations.
Because we are social animals we live in an inextricable, dense, all-enveloping network of mutual expectations. An important part of this expectation is recognition and respect. These expectations are negotiated and fulfilled through the roles we play. The roles we play are in turn defined by our identities.
We have a public identity and a private identity. My public identity defines the expectations of others towards myself. My private identity defines my expectations of myself and my expectations of how others should treat me.
There is always a gap between out private and public identities. In healthy people this gap is small because they are alert to feedback and adjust their private identities to minimise the gap. The immature cannot reconcile the gap and this creates the resentment mentioned by Dan-K.
This gap exists because we are aspirational and desire to be more than we are. Healthy people minimise the aspirational gap by tempering it with a sense of realism and by striving to achieve their aspirations. This takes hard work, persistence and determination to win the recognition and respect for our private identities that we need. When that happens our private and public identities are reconciled. However the requisite hard work, persistence and determination are qualities which are not fully developed in the immature.
They instead adopt the alternative strategy of the masquerade, which relies on symbols and posturing to publicly present their private identity. They try to act out their private identity and demand that others accept this representation of their identity.
Evolution discovered this trick a long time ago which is why the hairs rise on my dog’s back when confronting an aggressor. This is also why he has two prominent spots above his eyes, creating the illusion of larger eyes and therefore a larger dog.
It is a dismal truth that politicians and managers use this trick all the time, with surprising effectiveness.
But wisdom and maturity demand that we develop an authentic, private identity that is realisable and then work towards achieving this identity in one’s public roles, winning the recognition and respect that reconcile our private and public identities.
EJ,
“Mere syntax is powerless. On the other hand, consider: the Western courtesy expected of a man, that he opens a door for a woman, presents us with a signification, a gestural semantics, a physical grammar. so to speak, of respect and deferment, without which feminism in the West may very well have not developed.”
This is a powerful point. It was brought home forcibly to me during period of work in China where women are treated with far less deference. This was a frequent topic of conversation between my interpreter and myself, who often complained of the blatant sexual harassment she was subjected to at work, on the public transport and in public venues.
You may want to ask why Western countries have customarily shown greater deference to women? My interpreter asked the same question.
On a related note. I read advice for a Chinese person going to the US for the first time. An important point was not to spit in public! Most amusing was the advice not to summarily let go of the swing doors as you leave the airport as you will probably kill the poor, unsuspecting American behind you! It also devoted some space to explaining the unusual practice of Western people forming queues at every possible opportunity. Queue etiquette was explained.
EJ,
I should have explained that my previous comment was in part a reply to your earlier comment questioning the ‘self’, calling it a harmful fiction.
“The ‘self’ is a very inconvenient fiction. The Second Noble Truth tells us that it is the source of all our suffering.”
I maintain the opposite, that a fully developed concept of the self must inevitably lead to the recognition of other ‘selves’. Thus when I look into another person’s eyes I recognise she is like myself and not just instrumental to my needs. And this has important consequences. Just as I, as a consequence of my self-hood, expect recognition, consideration and respect, so too must I grant recognition, consideration and respect to others as a consequence of their self-hood, which mirrors mine.
This is why countries with a greater sense of individualism, like the West, have greater respect for individual rights and liberties and greater compassion for the suffering. It is a direct consequence of a more developed sense of self-hood that we see in ourselves and therefore recognise and grant to others.
It won’t always be like this. Consumerism and the easy self-gratification(especially sexual gratification) it affords, is resulting in a tidal wave of narcissism sweeping across the Western world. With it comes increasing solipsism that reduces others to a merely instrumental role for the furtherance of ones own gratification. In such a world recognition, consideration and respect for others will be greatly weakened.
The growing solipsism is creating a world of greater stress. One of the tools for coping with this stress is Stoicism.
I had a long flirtation with Stoicism, under the influence of Massimo. Finally I rejected it because it manifests today as an intense absorption with the self, focusing on providing tools that buffers the self against reality. In doing this it makes only token gestures towards the recognition of the other. Its talk of cosmopolitanism is one of those token gestures. A Stoic will claim that he recognises love as a virtue, but ask him where it is. He will show it to you, but buried somewhere under the heading of ‘Justice’.
Naturally Massimo denies that Stoicism is primarily self-directed, in contrast to the other-directness of Christianity, but a review of articles on Stoicism, both by himself and others, confirms my judgement. Look instead at the speeches of Pope Francis and you see a profoundly different orientation, one that is focused on love and the needs and the suffering of others. The contrast is astonishing.
Building on the previous essay, we need moral giants as beacons in a confusing, dangerous world. Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama are two such moral giants. Stoicism has none and it is doubtful that it ever had one.
Related to the essay. From Quarz:
“Philosophers published a “Black Lives Matter” series written entirely by white professors”
https://qz.com/992782/philosophers-published-a-black-lives-matter-series-written-entirely-by-white-professors/
From the article
Hmm, I’m not sure if this is a real controversy or a manufactured controversy. But this does raise questions. Why does the skin colour of a philosopher matter so much? Does skin colour privilege a philosopher’s writing? When should we make skin colour matter more than intellectual worth? What was the journal’s intent when it solicited articles? Did it desire the best articles, regardless of skin colour? Is that even legal? Or did it desire articles that best represented different viewpoints? Are philosophers with one skin colour barred from writing about the affairs of another skin colour? Or is that a hopeful sign that one skin colour is according due recognition to the concerns of another skin colour?
To that we should add two Arab philosophers, two Asian philosophers, two Chinese philosophers and two Japanese philosophers(provided that the Japanese and the Chinese promise not to talk about Senkaku). And don’t forget authentic African philosophers. There should be at least two of these from the home of Homo Sapiens, the cradle of mankind. We needn’t worry about Continental philosophers since nobody understands them anyway. No need to worry about Russian philosophy either, since it has gone all Orthodox and philosophy is peopled by iconoclasts.
If black lives matter then surely we should include two pro-life philosophers? Or shall we just abort this discussion?
Hi Dan, I agree that attempting to control language, thought, and behavior through anything other than social negotiation is anti-liberal and problematic. I also agree with the source of such activity and the prognosis of its success that you give more explicitly in your reply to Alan.
It seemed to me that your criticism in the essay was heading outside the box of just attempts to control, basically treating all activists as agreeing gender is socially constructed and then either acting as if or believing it to be something self-made.
I don’t see asking people to use alternative pronouns, and using normal social pressure to get them to do so, as believing gender is anything more/less than a social construct. All it takes for someone to do that is to see that the current social construct is inadequate to account for identities that already exist but were repressed, or have come to exist and so need representation to be useful.
That people are less willing to wait and more prone to go to legalistic action is a symptom of something more than believing something is self-made… a cultural problem related to information and economic drivers… and is true for conservatives as well.
Hi EJ,
“…in any society with democratic pretensions (which is all we ae, at this point), a 0.5% minority has no right to demand anything at all of the 99.05 percent majority”
Not sure I can agree with that statement. In a limited democracy (which is what the US is supposed to be) they have rights which they can demand, encoded in the Bill of Rights. In any other form of government they will have the right given they hold power (economic, political, military). Perhaps that is better said a powerless minority has no right to demand, but then neither does a powerless majority.
Dwayne: The demanded pronouns are a function of the asserted identities, and it’s those identities — if indeed they are socially constructed, on which the jury is still out; plenty of psychologists and biologists deny it — that are going to have to be publicly negotiated. We saw this in the dust-up between trans activists and old guard feminists, like Germaine Greer and others, who do not accept thae claim that trans women *are* women. But activists want to bypass this stage of social negotiation and simply insist and force, which simply is not going to work and if anything will only alienate people who otherwise should be natural allies.
Dwayne: With respect to your reply to EJ I also cannot agree. There may be rights in the Bill of Rights, but even they are subject to being overturned with a sufficient majority. If .05% of the population want something as radical as a fundamental transformation in how we conceive of identity and all that follows from that linguistically and otherwise, they are going to have to seek allies and build coalitions. Trying to force things will only backfire and make things much worse, as we saw with the last election.
DB,
“Not sure I can agree with that statement. In a limited democracy (which is what the US is supposed to be) they have rights which they can demand, encoded in the Bill of Rights”
If that is the case they can have their rights enforced by using the legal system. The legal system is used to enforce rights encoded in the Constitution.
Hi Dan,
“The demanded pronouns are a function of the asserted identities, and it’s those identities — if indeed they are socially constructed, on which the jury is still out; plenty of psychologists and biologists deny it — that are going to have to be publicly negotiated.”
This is where I am still not clear on the position you are taking. By “demanded” do you mean forced on others by means other than negotiation? Because I was agreeing with your take on that.
Where the disagreement would be (if there is one) is if you mean that simply entering negotiation with a position on wanting pronouns is itself too far, or in some way rejecting social construction. I am only rejecting this latter idea. How else are you supposed to change the construct without a personal observation of some kind which is different?
I guess I would also say that whether gender is a construct or not, the idea of using different pronouns to capture whatever the difference is that people are feeling, would have to be negotiated.
“We saw this in the dust-up between trans activists and old guard feminists, like Germaine Greer and others, who do not accept thae claim that trans women *are* women. But activists want to bypass this stage of social negotiation and simply insist and force, which simply is not going to work and if anything will only alienate people who otherwise should be natural allies.”
I’d want to distinguish between insist and force, but otherwise I agree with this.
It does raise the question how you go about changing intransigent populations. It’s all well and fine to say it must be negotiated but to pretend the intransigent are any better than those “insisting” would I think miss something important. And if there are enough intransigents, insistence (and sometimes force) may be all one has… and may be necessary.
I recently watched the documentary “I Am Not Your Negro”, which certainly had a rather forceful personality “insisting” people not call him the N word (what *is* the policy of writing that here?) and that he was *not* one… he was a man. Well that is arguably what *most* people at the time would have called him and considered him, no matter what he said on the matter. Was he wrong and somehow forcing personal control over his identity in a way that you would criticize? If not, why not?
Hi Dan and Labnut (and EJ), I think my comment to EJ was not clear enough. I was not trying to say that the people being discussed had any power or even right to get what they want using the Bill of Rights. I was simply rejecting the generic claim that minorities, even as small as 0.05% of the population don’t have the *right* to *demand* anything at all.
Whether they will get what they have a right to demand is another question, and says something about the true *limited* democratic nature of the society in question.
And in the US’s shift toward oligarchy it is already clear that 0.05% of the population can wield quite a bit of control and demand quite a bit from the majority. Do they do it in the same way as the powerless minority being discussed? No. Because they have the kind of power I was saying is required to make such demands.
I am not sure if this answers any issue you (Labnut) had with my claim. I do agree that it is the legal system otherwise powerless minorities are supposed be able to use to assert their rights.
You may not change intransigent populations. In a democracy, you may lose. That’s what makes it a democracy and not a dictatorship.
As for your comparison, I’m afraid I think it stinks. It’s of the reductio ad Hitler variety. To refuse to call someone “Zhe” or to refer to a single person as “them” is not like insisting on using the N-word, under any plausible interpretation.
Hi Dan, you seem to have read arguments into questions. I am trying to get a fix on *your* argument.
The first question can be boiled down to how else does one affect change regarding a social construct, especially a strongly held one, without “insisting” or making a “demand” of some kind? The strength of entry into social negotiation seems to be an issue for you, and outside of dragging in legalistic/coercive measures (which I agree is problematic) I am not sure why it should be.
The second was along the same lines, by using an example of someone “insisting” others not use a term, and believing it did not fit himself (or arguably exist). “Was he wrong and somehow forcing personal control over his identity in a way that you would criticize? If not, why not?”
Here the subject matter seems to trouble you, but the point was about his manner of changing the social construct and not to draw some moral equivalence about these issues.
Unless you are claiming use of the word to describe him was not a social construct, or that moral weight plays a factor in asserting one’s identity, it seems relevant. And if you are claiming one of those two that would be useful to know.
“To refuse to call someone “Zhe” or to refer to a single person as “them” is not like insisting on using the N-word, under any plausible interpretation.”
I agree the former are “not like” the latter along moral dimensions, though my guess is at the time you’d find quite a number of people disagreeing with you as they would consider both positions equally outrageous.
But none of that is relevant to what I was asking.
Whether all of these terms are social constructs, and attempts to change their usage (up or down) based on assertion of self-identity is the question, and seems relevant.
I hope this clears up what I am looking for. It is only after I have a fix that I know if there is something I can/would argue against.
Hi DB,
“ I was simply rejecting the generic claim that minorities, even as small as 0.05% of the population don’t have the *right* to *demand* anything at all.”
Everybody has the right to make demands. It is simply one of the freedoms we enjoy in a democracy. But making demands is not a terribly useful strategy in a democracy, unless the demands have some kind of compelling force. The compelling force of the demands may reside in legal compulsion, moral compulsion, legislative compulsion or societal compulsion. Failing these means we may cajole, implore, beseech, persuade, manipulate, emotionally blackmail, lobby, form alliances, etc until we have mobilised sufficient compulsion to carry the day.
But should we? Should a tiny proportion of a population endeavour to impose their will on the vast majority through the skillful application of the various means of compulsion? These kinds of victories are in the end Pyrrhic because the resentment it creates weakens the fabric of democracy. We inevitably pay a deferred cost which is much greater than the putative benefit.
Democracy is at its heart the resolution of conflicting interests through symbolic conflict in a virtual arena under the aegis of a set of rules and an arbiter. It creates winners and losers. Not all of us are going to get everything we want so we better get used to losing, and we better get used to moderating our demands so that, when we win, the losers can live with our demands.
Given the conflictual nature of democracy there are many issues which are better resolved at a lower level through persuasion, negotiation and consensus seeking. This is a longer and more difficult process with no guaranteed outcomes but the eventual outcomes are stable and well accepted. But even at this level we may fail, so we better get used to losing. The problems start when we have parties that are not prepared to accept losing because that is when the fight gets nasty.
Some kinds of demands have a clear moral weight which requires us to fight with conviction and persistence until we carry the day. But such a fight must be a moral fight that is never compromised by its means. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Dennis Hurley, Alex Boraine and Helen Suzman waged such fights against Apartheid. The result is a lasting and stable agreement.
Dwayne, I don’t know if I can be much clearer than I have been. My views on the gender issue are summarized as follows:
1. The question of whether gender identity is entirely a social construct is not settled. There are any number of scientists — credible scientists — who dispute it. It will likely take a long time and a lot more scientific investigation before there is any kind of credible, established scientific position on this. (It seems to me that it would be exceedingly odd that something that correlates as high as over 95%, as gender does with physiological sex, would be an entirely social construct.) And until this is settled — to the extent that scientific matters can be settled — the rest of the conversation is effectively on hold.
2. If it *is* entirely socially constructed — or even if part of it is — then whatever new view on gender we settle upon — that is, new relative to the traditional view — will be a matter of social consensus. That consensus does not even remotely exist yet — partly for the reasons mentioned in 1 — and will not for some time, given how radical what is being suggested is. To say that someone who has been a man for 40 years and then transitions simply *is* a woman and should go to women’s colleges etc., or that there are 50+ genders, are wildly radical things to say, requiring wholesale reconceptualizations of virtually every dimension of social life, including basic language, and will require a hell of a lot of convincing before anything like a majority of people accept it. In truth, whatever consensus does emerge, I highly doubt it will go anywhere near as far as the activists want.
3. That social consensus can only happen as the result of a substantial, ongoing, multi-generational conversation. And given the truly tiny number of people we are talking about, it is going to require an awful lot of good will. In short, the sort of pushing and shoving and threatening and the like that seems to be the current strategy can only fail and worse, produce a major backlash. As I have argued numerous times, I think we saw just such a backlash with Trump’s election.
So, yeah, when you are in a tiny minority, in an incredibly weak position, wanting wildly radical social changes, you’d better be patient, clever, and court as many allies as possible, if you want a chance in hell of even achieving a fraction of what you want, let alone the whole thing.
Dan-K,
“Dwayne, I don’t know if I can be much clearer than I have been. My views on the gender issue are summarized as follows:… …”
Lovely summation, done with your trademark clarity.
Dwayne: If you want a taste of just how complicated this is and how long it’s going to take to sort out some sort of social consensus, check this out. A critique of much of trans politics from the perspective of radical feminists.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/06/07/the-left-hand-of-darkness/
This is why demanding, insisting, threatening, pushing and shoving is not going to work. If trans activists think they have a chance in hell without the support of other left wing identity movements, they are dreaming.
I’m in complete agreement with everything you (Dan and Labnut) just said, and thought I had argued along these lines already. But these are practical questions, pertaining to the kinds of powerless minorities discussed in the essay. I was questioning and raising potential criticism where things appeared to go beyond that…
………..
Regarding EJ’s comment, to get this out of the way first, I was only pointing out that small minorities are not inherently powerless… even if the specific ones being discussed certainly are. He had made a grander statement (no minorities, no rights, no demands of any kind at all). This is patently untrue, and I stated how it could have been modified to be more accurate. The modifications had to do with power, in addition to legal power there is political, economic, and military. Everything discussed by others has fallen along those lines (legal and/or political).
………….
More important is Dan’s essay/argument. If it was merely about the practical issues faced by such people, and how poorly they have chosen their tactics, then I wouldn’t have said anything beyond agreeing (which I did on that aspect from my first post). I thought Dan was making a more novel, complex, and so interesting case, related to theory…
1) Not liberal. The use of legalistic and coercive tactics clearly violate liberal tenets, so I agreed with that argument. However, it (and commentary) appeared to imply that using strong negotiating tactics, such as making personal demands or “insisting” (for example, “I want you to call me zhe and I won’t answer to anything else”), are somehow illiberal . As rude, impractical, or inadvisable as that may be (and mileage varies on such things) I don’t think that it is anti-liberal.
2) Forcing personal control over identity. This was arguably the most intriguing addition to common criticisms of gender identity, and what I was raising questions about. Most of the essay seemed to be diagnosing the source and nature of dissatisfaction and so intention of activists, while at the same time revealing a potential intellectual error or hypocrisy being committed by them. In some cases (i.e. Dolezol, those claiming real harm or seeking individualized terms) the criticism people are trying to assert/control over their identity (and ignore the realities of social constructs) seemed true, but then those do not cover the entirety of activists on these kinds of issues*, even if some of the end desires are similar. It also seemed to assume science and status quo as naturally superior gatekeepers, rather than acknowledging their very limited role on the subject at hand (not to mention prone to the same problem of projecting personal identity**). And finally, it seemed to treat the strength of “insistence” as indicative of trying to control personal identity by negating social negotiation.
I don’t think this holds for all activists seeking changes to language and used an example which got to both of these (points 1 and 2). I think *some* gender/sexual activists are using the same approach as James Baldwin (the person I mentioned), and it is unfortunate to lump all gender activists in together. While strength of “insistence” is a practical consideration to keep in mind, it does not seem a defining quality of if someone is trying to engage in anything other that social negotiation regarding a social construct.
*I realize space was short, but it is useful to try to avoid equating all these very different ideas, projects, and interests. For example, interest in pronoun use for intersex is different from that for transgender which is different from that for gender fluidity or the myriad sexual orientation descriptors. I thought the suggestion that all people who are not suffering from clinical gender dysphoria are in some fashion misappropriating something, was errant. Yes, some might be. But others may not. I admit, these get sloshed together by some activists as well… so it is not like this just a mistake you have made.
**The problem is not entirely whether different genders exist, based on some scientific evidence. The problem (regardless of objective data on sex and gender) is if the binary gender pronouns are useful or adequate for the range of communication or expression desired about sex/gender. That is a feeling, not something that science can tell us anything of great interest about, and it doesn’t have to involve self-identity at all. Let’s say transgenders went about their lives not caring about pronoun use. If it became a common enough phenomenon (and it is growing) non trans people might seek this themselves so as not to cause confusion in communication. It just so happens that intersex/transgenders and those around them are facing it first, which makes sense. And as far as science goes, given its track record on determining anything about sexuality, much less gender, I’m not sure how it (or rather scientists) can be seen as a neutral authority without a stake in preserving/controlling their own sense of personal identity, or trying to short cut social negotiation, according to the criteria set for activists.
Dan-K,
Phew, after reading that article I feel as though I have been sucked down into a vortex of terminal confusion. What does it mean? Are radical feminists merely being old fashioned by defending their pitch from an invasion of lesbian loving men? Where is the love?
Nope, this is too much for me. I am going to return to the braai(barbecue for the ignorant) with a beer in one hand, a sizzling red steak with some boerewors on a fork in the other hand while I watch real men pummel each other in a real game of rugby. People who hint at homo-eroticism don’t know what they are talking about as is evident from my keen anticipation of the high kicking pom-pom girls at half-time. They are all the feminism I need 🙂
But the article, in its title “The Left Hand of Darkness” does highlight a significant problem. We lefties suffer from real, enduring discrimination and the title of the article adds insult to injury. It is a sinister plot enacted by the dextrous who are adroitly claiming we are gauche. Consider this. Even my can opener can only be used right handed. Worse still, there is the case of my bolt-action rifle. First I must master the contrived contortions required for me to reach over the barrel to operate the bolt and then I must stifle the gasp of pain as my wrist is seared on the hot rifle barrel. No wonder I shot so few ANC terrorists.
But there is worse to come. The research assures me that we lefties have significantly shorter lifespans. That is what a lifetime of discrimination at the hands of the high and mighty righteous does to one 🙂
But you must hand it to us, we don’t make handy excuses. The transphobic world of radfems could learn from us lefties.
Hi Dan, I’m still reading that counterpunch clip, but wanted to say it’s great and reminds me of what Mark said up top…
“…when things are laughable, people usually see it – and laugh.”
I’m laughing. This is 2nd wave feminism getting bit in the ass by its own toxic products.
What a web we weave…
Agreed.
Dan,
That article in Counterpunch was very special.
“Adrian, a man who has somewhat de-transitioned, has not been able to completely transition back due to the fact that he had gone through sex reassignment surgery leaving him without a penis.”
Even John Collier, the master of first sentences that are a story on their own, couldn’t write a sentence like that.
But the article highlighted in some weird way a problem I haven’t been thinking about enough. Wouldn’t this self-identification as a certain gender be detrimental to women in the first place?
I know the US had its bathroom debate, but it didn’t really connect with me because most of the places I go to simply don’t have separate bathrooms for men and women. But after reading the Counterpunch article I started thinking about sports. The US women’s soccer team is arguably the best in the world. But it would lose 25 – 0 in a match against the under 18s of, say, Ajax Amsterdam or Lyon (if these young boys were in a charitable mood). Marianne Vos arguably is the most successful professional cyclist of the last decade, but even an average male domestique would leave her in the dust. Biological women would be wiped from the charts if society (and therefore sports associations) would accept self-identification as a female. Biological women would simply disappear from view.
Or take boardrooms. Many boardrooms are (almost) exclusively male. But they could easily redress the balance by pointing out that half of the members identify as female.
I live in a town with a socialist mayor. He’s almost 80, very competent and he don’t take no shit from no-one. He always says: “your rights stop where mine begin”. Do self-identification activists know that bon mot?
Thank you for an interesting and in many ways elucidating analysis.
Obviously, this also has consequences for how we view “representation” as in various attempts to find the “correct” blend of different identities. A board, a committe, a university is expected to reflect the population as a whole and it then becomes the matter 1) to identify the relevant categories (identities) and 2) what they actually “represent”. Can any male, however defined, “represent” all males, can a black person represent all black people?
labnut, I fear your comments may cause offence to the ambidextrous (better termed the ambigauchist), not to mention those who were born left and transitioned right or vice versa. Then’s there’s those who are ambilevous (known pejoratively as ambisinister), who are blessedly non-able-ist on both sides of the body.
You can’t escape the vortex that easily.
On re-reading ‘that article‘ I realise that I have been deceived by an exceedingly clever parody.
I love parody for the way it clears the mind with a hard punch in the guts, which is quite counter-intuitive. Parody must cleverly deceive, leading us in, step by step, to accept the impossibly improbable until cognitive dissonance overwhelms us with sufficient force that that the truth is thrust before our eyes. The best parody is a sucker punch and it is only this morning that my mind was sufficiently clear that I could see the Counterpunch article was a brilliant parody of the transgressive/radfem world. It was a superb sucker punch.
It gets even better when the parody is an unconscious self-parody and Julian Vigo gave us a masterly lesson in the art of self parody by treating us to a self-administered sucker punch. I know that seems impossible but Julian Vigo has done just that which is why he/she/it/zhe/zher/zit published it in Counterpunch. In his/her/zhe/zher/zit honour I propose that we create a new composite pronoun from She, He, It and Transgressive – SHIT.
Dan-K, you well and truly led us down the garden path.
Hi Couvent, I didn’t think people could read the counterpunch article and come away thinking any of the radical positions, especially those of the radical feminists (since they created this mess), had some merit.
“Wouldn’t this self-identification as a certain gender be detrimental to women in the first place?”
No.
“He always says: “your rights stop where mine begin”. Do self-identification activists know that bon mot?”
Given that LGBTs have been the focus of bigotry and oppression using the claim of “rights” of anti-LGBTs my guess the answer would be *yes*.
Let’s look at what you began to worry about more critically…
“Biological women would be wiped from the charts if society (and therefore sports associations) would accept self-identification as a female. Biological women would simply disappear from view.”
First of all, that scenario would require a rather large amount of men to transition *and* be interested in competitive sports across all fields *and* actually be competitive with top athletes that are biological women. That top male athletes might be able to beat top women athletes, does not in any way shape or form mean that *any* male athlete would be better than *all* female athletes in all categories.
Second, and more important, you have just confused gender with biological sex. Since it is the biological differences between the biological sexes that create the disparity in physical competition, one would assume that if this started to become an issue sports would continue the separation based on *biological* sex and not gender.
Third, if for some reason all sports decided gender was the key attribute for dividing male and female competition, not (born) biological sex, then one would presume more divisions would be created to balance competition. Imagine the multitude of new sports divisions based on all the new gender classifications! But even within traditional “male” and female” categories, they could create new subdivisions just as we already do within men’s and women’s sports to remove endue advantage (like weight classes).
To be honest, the worry you express seems reminiscent of when people worried about allowing blacks into sports.
“Or take boardrooms. Many boardrooms are (almost) exclusively male. But they could easily redress the balance by pointing out that half of the members identify as female.”
Assuming it is not a joke… relax for a bit and I’ll try talking you down from this bad trip.
Boardrooms that are exclusively male are either happenstance, or they are intentional. Where they are happenstance they are unlikely to use the device you just set up. And where they are intentional, they are even *more* unlikely to use the device you just set up. Unless you are suggesting that blatantly sexist bigots will feel more comfortable around transwomen? That they will somehow feel better, like they have put down “real” women in some way? That some of them would be comfortable transitioning (or pretending to transition) to make that happen, because after all they would still really be men?
And what transwoman would feel comfortable in such an environment… unless you buy into the radfem concept that they are still really men and looking to join up with men to oppress women?
But even if we assumed all of those situations above are not paranoid, the fact remains that women can still start and run companies. And no transwoman will have some inherent advantage over a biological woman in business (as you argued with sports). So I guess let those sexist men have or become all the transwomen they want (as if transwomen wouldn’t press to bring in biological women?). As long as they choose biology over talent and hard work, my guess is they aren’t going to come off better in the long run.
Biological women cannot be wiped out of the business world, just because a small percentage of biological men feel and so transition toward the opposite gender.
Whew, I hope that helps. I know that radfem Kool-Aid can be some rough stuff!
Dwayne: While the article certainly is excessive, I think many of the old guard feminists’ complaints against the new trans activism are correct. This, for example, strikes me as spot-on.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/opinion/sunday/what-makes-a-woman.html?_r=0
“The landscape that’s being mapped and the language that comes with it are impossible to understand and just as hard to navigate. ”
Ah, at last there was something that made sense in the NY Times article. Turgid terf wars over the ownership of vaginas??? Please tell me I am dreaming. I am going to ask my two sisters for their opinion of these two articles. I wonder what they will say?
Labnut: My major take-away had to do with the point regarding common experiences, which I thought was powerfully put and obviously correct. No trans women has had the adolescent experience of having her first period. Or the experience of pregnancy and childbirth. Or of miscarriage. Or of a hundred other distinctively women’s experiences. There is something deeply wrong, then, not to mention offensive — given the profound significance of some of these experiences — for someone who has been a man for decades and transitioned to say, “I’m a woman. Let me into Smith.”
Done. My sisters have promised to study those articles. Let’s see.
Dan-K,
“Labnut: My major take-away had to do with the point regarding common experiences, which I thought was powerfully put and obviously correct.”
Yes, I recognise that and agree with you. Nevertheless I am severely discombobulated by the entire discourse.
Hi Dan,
“I think many of the old guard feminists’ complaints against the new trans activism are correct. ”
While I’m not sure I’d quantify it as “many” I think both sets of radicals have some legitimate complaints about the other sets’ claims and activities. That is because we are looking at two radical groups doing very irrational things with some obvious problems. If we pull back and look outside of them we can find non-radicals making the same complaints without the excess baggage.
“This, for example, strikes me as spot-on.”
I think some of the author’s criticism is correct. Some I think is partially correct. And some pretty well off the mark. One of the most devastating points she delivers (to my mind) is how interest in stereotypical or limited subset of “feminine” activities is used by some transactivists as signifying a male is really a female. This point was examined in greater detail in the counterpunch article which showed that family and doctors (and scientists!) make that same mistake.
But the problem is she goes on to make the same kind of error.
You liked her discussion of common experiences as somehow being capable of defining what a woman is…
“No trans women has had the adolescent experience of having her first period. Or the experience of pregnancy and childbirth. Or of miscarriage. Or of a hundred other distinctively women’s experiences.”
The things listed are powerful experiences that only women can have. But it has to be pointed out that not all women do have them, and some women may have (depending on the list) none of them. So does that makes these people non-women?
It gets worse when she starts (and this was also found in the counterpunch article) cultural experiences. To make differential pay, or lack of safety on the street, or being hurt in some way a defining “common experience” of being a woman seems errant. That it is a common experience for many, most, or all in a specific society is one thing, to say treat it as “making a woman” is something (especially when they are all negative) horrifying. But of course that is necessary when one wants a revolutionary, class-based definition of a group. It’s not that women are being hurt, it is that the property of being a woman is to have been (and continue to be) hurt.
If we are going to allow for such cultural-based criteria, that is experiences that are common to women in a specific cultural, why can’t Jenner or others point to things common in US culture like wanting to wear nail polish or lipstick? Because those are common positive experiences? They need to be balanced out by negatives? Again, what of the actual women who have not suffered through most (or any) of the negatives and mostly only had the positives. Are they not women?
“There is something deeply wrong, then, not to mention offensive — given the profound significance of some of these experiences — for someone who has been a man for decades and transitioned to say, “I’m a woman. Let me into Smith.””
I think that depends on the type of woman (meaning the kinds of experiences women have had) Smith is meant to cater to. It could be broad and it could be narrow. These are valid choices of course, but then to make it narrow and expect to only single out a transwoman? I mean… what you just said, could apply to an otherwise understood biological woman who grew up in a healthy culture (and so none of the negative cultural commonalities) and had no biological functions common to most women (due to genetic or developmental problems).
But I do understand your point, it’s just that the solutions are not so easy or cut and dried.
This is a mess.
One of the first things that needs to be accepted (and this is by radical transactivists as well) is that we are dealing with outliers of experience. Intersex and transgender (biological and neuro-psychologically variable) identities are not going to come in to any situation “clean” according to some stereotype list of what it is to be X. Perhaps Smith wants “pure” women.
Is that bigoted? Maybe.
Is that bad?
db,
I agree with Dan. If gender choices indeed are a social construct, then the words “I identify as female” (or male) is a philosophical contradictio in terminis. The identifying is at least partially done by society, and not only by fiat of the individual person making the statement.
This makes some sort of social negotiation necessary. I suggested – in an indirect way – that for once the first party doing the negotiations with the trans movement should perhaps be women, and not white, male patriarchy. These negotiations aren’t go to be easy. Social practices based on specific notions of gender, biological sex and the relations between those two, are deeply embedded in society. To illustrate that idea, I offered two examples: boardrooms and sports. They were the most innocent examples I could think of and, in the case of boardrooms, on purpose slightly absurd.
And then you write:
“To be honest, the worry you express seems reminiscent of when people worried about allowing blacks into sports.”
That’s a pretty grave insult, db.
Yeah, we just aren’t going to agree on this. I think the feminists’ claims, by and large, are far better established and make much more sense. The point that “not all women have had a first period” etc., is just irrelevant, I’m afraid, to the point, which has to do with the formative experiences of the overwhelming majority of women, who are 50% of the population on the earth.
But, we’re juts going to go around and around, so I’ll leave it at that.
To be honest, the worry you express seems reminiscent of when people worried about allowing blacks into sports.
= = =
I hadn’t noticed this until Couvent pointed it out. It’s outrageous, obnoxious, and cheap. Really beneath you Dwayne.
Hi Dan, ok we can leave it where it is. Just remember I was being critical of radical transactivist positions as well, suggesting they have to take this very thing “the formative experiences of the overwhelming majority of women” into account.
“It’s outrageous, obnoxious, and cheap. ”
You mean compared to a claim that people transitioning might actually eliminate biological women from the face of sports?
I’ll try to do better. I hope others will do the same.
Dan-K,
“Whatever the new consensus will be, it will have to be a consensus – that’s what socially constructed facts are grounded in – and this means it will have to be a matter of public negotiation.”
You have several times stressed the importance of public negotiation, and I agree with you, but it is more complicated than that. Public negotiation is both explicit and implicit. We are here engaging in explicit public negotiation but you would need to see the expression of disbelief and distaste on my face as I read those articles for there to be implicit public negotiation. Your face might in return reflect your strong disapproval of my bigotry, which would be the other side of the negotiation. This implicit public negotiation, or signalling, was a powerful channel that shaped much of our behaviour.
This channel is being lost as we transition into a world where we are insulated from signalling, the implicit public negotiation channel. The inflection point in this transition took place ten years ago when the iPhone first appeared. And as this channel is being lost we are being freed from the salutary corrective force of implicit negotiation. There is no sneer on my interlocutor’s face to shame me for my inappropriate behaviour. We are exquisitely fine tuned to read each other’s signals in subtle hints of expression, gaze, intonation and bearing because it was vital to conduct in a social world. It shaped us more powerfully than the explicit content of public negotiation.
It is this fact of being freed from the salutary force of implicit negotiation which is liberating. But it is liberating in a dangerous sense. That is because I possess a private identity which defines how I see myself. It is an aspirational identity which might be far from reality. Ordinarily our private identity is held in check and grounded by the feedback we receive through the public signalling channel. This meant that I could not arbitrarily construct my private identity in any way I chose. With the weakening and dissolution of the public signalling channel I am increasingly able to construct my private identity as I choose.
But a private identity only has meaning when recognised publicly and this is a contradiction if private identity is shaped with no regard for public forces. This can be resolved in two ways. First, by endeavouring to impose, through various means, one’s private identity on the public consciousness. And that is exactly what is going on. Secondly it can be resolved by seeking out the company of like minded people, which the Internet enables. But this is a pernicious process which further insulates the person from healthy feedback and increases hyper-partisanship.
But it gets worse. The gap between our private and public identities is a measure of our mental health and maturity. The larger the gap the more delusional we become and more disconnected from reality. We become floating islands of self-confirming cognitive bias at war with other islands of self-confirming, cognitive bias lest they disconfirm our chosen bias. This is what is happening to the country and the two articles illustrate it admirably.
Hi Couvent, it seems that no matter how many times I agree on a general point being made in this thread, my criticism of what I see as an errant extended portion has me being accused of disagreeing in total.
“I agree with Dan. If gender choices indeed are a social construct, then the words “I identify as female” (or male) is a philosophical contradictio in terminis. The identifying is at least partially done by society, and not only by fiat of the individual person making the statement.”
Yeah, I agreed with that at least three times in this thread already, and has *nothing* to do with the criticism of the very specific claims you made.
“I suggested – in an indirect way – that for once the first party doing the negotiations with the trans movement should perhaps be women, and not white, male patriarchy.”
You do understand that this involves a whole range of people, including people that never were males, right? There are intersex people which fall into this category of discussion. And where did you get white from? Do you know how many non-whites are trans or transactivists?
But yes, I understand that to radfem doctrine it is seen as all white, male patriarchy.
If it matters, I *agree* that much of this will have to be a dialogue between trans and biological women, and that biological women will be better arbiters of distinctions/categories they want to use. Nothing I said suggested otherwise. My only disagreement is that radfem positions are the only or best representatives of *all* or *most* biological women.
“Social practices based on specific notions of gender, biological sex and the relations between those two, are deeply embedded in society. To illustrate that idea, I offered two examples: boardrooms and sports.”
Oh come on. You go on to claim that I insulted you, please do not insult me. I criticized two specific claims… completely outrageous claims… that suggested the existence of transwomen would threaten biological women in some way.
I showed how those examples were simply based in fear, and not on any real threat.
If you want to dispute the actual arguments I made against your examples, that’s great. But all you have done here is argue a position I basically already argued for (as if I was arguing against that) and then tried to soft- or back-pedal the same arguments I actually disagreed with, as if that makes them reasonable.
No, transwomen will not pose a threat to women in sports or the boardroom, particularly in the fashion you laid out.
“That’s a pretty grave insult, db.”
Well it wasn’t meant to be. And frankly, before I apologize, I’d like you to unpack that statement for me. What exactly have I accused you of, insulted you as being, and why is it “pretty grave”?
I made a connection between an irrational fear that transwomen would wipe women out of sports, to the earlier irrational fear that allowing racially integrated teams would wipe whites out of sports. Please let me know how those are entirely different.
I also did not move beyond that to say you were afraid of transgenders (or blacks).
So, I am sorry (not sarcastic) that I offended you in some way. I meant to make a parallel to the kind of worry, not to say that *you* are or remind me of bigots… which I take it is what you are accusing me of doing.
Dan and Couvent, I take accusations like those you guys levelled at me pretty seriously. Given that it came from two sources, one trusted from experience, I decided to reality check myself.
So I ran Couvent’s claims by a female–we have all agreed they are the authority here–who is definitely a feminist (fierce, though not 2nd wave), and experienced in competitive sports. The first words out of her mouth were “What???” She thought it was as patently outrageous and paranoid as I thought it was.
I then told her that people were offended that I compared it to past arguments regarding the effects of allowing blacks into sports. Her immediate comment was “What was wrong with that?” She went on to say that it seems directly comparable… which is not even the strength of claim I was making (I said “reminiscent”).
While I’m still sorry that I caused offence, whatever the reason, I’m disappointed that accusations of being insulting is all I received to a clear argument against a patently outrageous claim, which itself can be seen as offensive (she thought it was, to women and transgenders alike). And this is not to get to the bizarre boardroom argument, and the patronizing “have transgenders ever considered what some old guy likes to say” non sequitur.
I’ll be interested to see if any counterarguments to support the original claims ever get made, though I won’t hold my breath.
Since the topic of this reply is being offensive, I will note there is a suggestion in arguments being made that transitioning (or being transgender) is something as simple as declaring “I identify as X”. This seems deeply ignorant of what is involved in most cases. I’m sure there might be people that try to abuse the blurring lines in this fashion, but that is not the common experience. And the idea that real transgenders are part of a “white, male patriarchy” seems to miss entirely what they are saying and how they are treated by the white, male patriarchy. Again, I think radical transactivists make mistakes of their own, and need to be called on it. But really… part of the patriarchy? Heck, no one has even addressed my mention of intersex populations… it’s always with the old, white dude scarecrow.
Finally, since Couvent cared so much about threats to women in sports, what I did not say originally, but will point out now (after my convo with the athlete), is if I agreed with the argument and then thought transwomen should really compete with men, that would de facto argue that transmen should compete with women. Not sure how happy radfems will be with prior biological women, who look like men, and take hormones that can boost physical performance, competing against biological women without the hormonal enhancements.
There is a suggestion in arguments being made that transitioning (or being transgender) is something as simple as declaring “I identify as X”. This seems deeply ignorant of what is involved in most cases.
= = = = = =
Baloney. The number of clinically dysphoric people is vanishingly small. So, the alleged 20% of millennials who are claiming to be trans and queer are doing precisely what is described. And yes, I think it is part of the “self-made” phenomenon, which is misapplied, if gender is socially constructed.
Intersex is even less common of a phenomenon. .018%.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12476264
.
It’s also worth noting that the essay is not about trans. And yet, predictably, that’s the part that everyone’s fixated on. I knew that would happen, but it’s disappointing nonetheless.
Dwayne: Re the thing between you and Couvent, I doubt he seriously believes that men are actually going to transition in sufficient numbers to actually address gender imbalances that currently exist in various domains. The point is an intellectual one — would we be satisfied that those imbalances had been addressed if they did? It’s a way of getting at the intuitional question — one that will be part of whatever social consensus arises — as to whether trans women are *women* in the relevant sense: the sense in which we talk about women’s colleges; women’s sports; etc.
I think the answer is *obviously* “no” and I think that will be society’s answer as well. On this I think the feminists are absolutely right, and you know very well that I don’t agree with them on a lot.
For this you compared couvent to an old school, hardcore racist. That’s what I said is outrageous.
I’m also starting to wonder about “radfem” which sounds to me like a variation on TERF. Unsurprisingly, feminists are starting to hit back against this sort of characterization of people who after decades won very hard-fought battles for equality for women, who make up 50% — not .05% of the population.
https://terfisaslur.com/
Hi DB,
I have no intention of entering the debate of the merits of radfems vs the trans. Much more interesting to me is the phenomenon the debate reveals.
But we do have recent experience in SA of the pitfalls that can be incurred were it possible in sport for someone born male to declare himself female. This is the problem that Couvent was referring to.
Caster Semenya was born a woman in a small South African village. She became an outstanding competitor in 800 and 1500m races, setting several records. Her rapid improvement attracted unfavourable attention and she was tested for being a female. It turned out that she had hyperandrogenism, having high natural levels of testosterone. A furious debate resulted and after first being disqualified, she was eventually allowed to continue competing as a woman, though many continued to believe she had a grossly unfair advantage over other female competitors.
This provoked a nasty debate and the only innocent person in the debate was Caster Semenya, who simply continued to be herself. My heart goes out to her for her undeserved pain.
But this does illustrate the problems that could arise if male competitors could declare themselves to be female so as to compete as females. With their higher natural testosterone there is every chance that they would dominate many events(but this is controversial). It would be a shortcut to achieving sporting recognition and I think there is no doubt that some unscrupulous male competitors would exploit it.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caster_Semenya
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperandrogenism
This is complex and I don’t really want to debate it, except to point out that, as usual, the law of unexpected consequences applies with a vengeance.
db,
What Dan said (thanks, Dan).
Hi Labnut, just to be clear this response is not an argument against what you said. If anything, I am grateful as your reply allows me to expand on what I said in a neutral (at least non-antagonistic) way.
Yes the case you mentioned appears to be one of intersex, or at least an outlier of hormonal balance found within women. This gets to exactly what I was talking about so I am very glad you brought it up.
You are right that the question of how to deal with intersex and transpersons in sports competitions has been, is, and will be complex. It’s been going on since the 70s, and there are top sports women that are for transgenders playing in their transitioned sex, and some against it. Billy Jean King who famously fought the “battle of the sexes” tennis match against a man, is for it.
My argument was that the fear of this leading to women losing their place in sports is totally unrealistic (given the arguments I made and as yet no one has argued against). While some theoretical potential may exist, it demands a series of assumptions that are extremely unlikely, including that transgenders lack some concept of justice or honest interest in sports.
Could there be a few people who try to take advantage? Sure, all sorts of people cheat, so why not?
But that’s why rules will develop, as they already have been since the 70s. Earlier I gave my guesses to the kinds of changes that will occur. Apparently US boxing has a pretty strict guideline in place, which is based on time after transition (which is verifiable) including changes to show advantages have been reduced sufficiently. That makes sense. My guess is cases like Caster could introduce new rules related to our advancing knowledge of physical diversity within sexes.
Here are a list of some of the more famous transgender (and intersex) sports stars:
http://www.thesportster.com/entertainment/top-15-famous-transgender-athletes/
And a case of where insistence of birth biological sex, rather than actual physical development from hormones, backfired (on women):
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/25/sports/transgender-boys-matches-with-girls-leave-all-unsatisfied.html
It was a tragedy for the transboy, who was equally as innocent as Caster.
I guess this is why I have little tolerance for hypotheticals, particularly those that rest on radfem positions (as the case above shows the shortcomings and as you said “unexpected consequences”), and an assumed base dishonesty of transgenders. Transathletes will be like most athletes, some will cheat, most will want an honest competition.
The kinks have to be worked out, and like other disparities in sports have been (age, size), I am confident they will be too.
My argument was that the fear of this leading to women losing their place in sports is totally unrealistic (given the arguments I made and as yet no one has argued against).
= = =
Sure we have. No one was suggesting it as a real possibility. The point was just to imagine if one would accept that current gender disparities would be satisfactorily solved if they were filled with trans women. It gets at the intuition-based question of whether trans women are women in the relevant gender senses. And I stand by my claim that they are not. If the current corporate CEO disparities were addressed by filling the gaps with trans women I don’t think anyone would be satisfied that the problem had been solved.
Hi Dan,
“Baloney. The number of clinically dysphoric people is vanishingly small. So, the alleged 20% of millennials who are claiming to be trans and queer are doing precisely what is described.”
I don’t know what you were calling baloney. I have already discussed your mistake about demanding dysphoria, and agreed that some people may be claiming things incorrectly. I admit I’m somewhat sceptical of the 20% figure meaning millenials are claiming to have transitioned, and by transgender it is not clear what is meant by that (it has different meanings to different people)… throw in queer and you get to the broad mix of sex, gender, and sexual orientation categories I was talking about. So I don’t know if that figure, as broad based as it is, is accurate or not.
That said, let me repeat… I agree there is something problematic in someone simply saying “I identify as X”, I agree that there are people making mistakes along those lines, and so in reality… when we are talking about actual transgenders… the suggestion being made that *that* is as simple as “I identify as X” is ignorant. That ignorant people think they can do it (presumably the millennials), does not absolve ignorant people thinking actual transgenders are doing it. That is what I was referring to as “most cases”. Real transgenders. These are the only ones that are athletes open to competition as opposite gender and about which any serious discussion of the issue is about.
Since the counterpunch article was extensively about actual transgenders and not simply vapid Millennial whimsy, I was forced to take Couvent’s comments (which cited the counterpunch article as the source of his ideas) as meaning actual transgenders. And even if I were to assume he meant the whimsical stuff, then how does that boardroom scenario hold any water? Indeed, that doesn’t seem to play into questions about women’s colleges, sports, or whatever. And what of the bon mot?
Anyway, I’ll let Couvent argue his own case and not bother you about it.
“I think the answer is *obviously* “no” and I think that will be society’s answer as well. ”
That may be true for many things. And as I suggested that could even be valid, and something transgenders will have to take into account. But basically the “relevant” sense you stated just means case dependent, not whether some true definition of a woman was found for which they ultimately fail. That is to say any particular group is looking for *this* kind of woman and not that kind of woman. *This* is the *relevant* category of woman… and then it can be born biological, or current biological, or broader gender-based. It will depend.
Labnut gave the excellent example of a biological woman who may not fit the *relevant* criteria for women’s sports. This stuff is real which is why I brought it up. My own work involves a genetic condition which effects such things, so I am a bit sensitive when people think the subject is so easy and use what I see as rather flippant hypotheticals.
As far as sports go, your guess seems to be wrong for some fields already. And I recommend reading the clips I gave Labnut, especially the one of the transboy. There the idea he was not a boy, appears to be a big mistake. Very unfortunate.
“For this you compared couvent to an old school, hardcore racist. That’s what I said is outrageous.”
That would be outrageous, which is why I didn’t do it. I compared the argument. Again, someone else saw the same thing.
“I’m also starting to wonder about “radfem” which sounds to me like a variation on TERF.”
I was using the terms within the article for convenience since the discussion was primarily about that article. My usual term for the feminism I criticize is 2nd wave, which I made explicit in my first reply about the article. Radfem was shorter so…
But I’d rather switch than fight. I’ll go back to 2nd wave.
“characterization of people who after decades won very hard-fought battles for equality for women, who make up 50% — not .05% of the population.”
Well I wouldn’t agree that 2nd wave was responsible for anything like that. They have created more problems than they solved. And I am not certain why I should care if the hard fought battle is for 50 or 0.05… as long as it was just.
My only reason for linking to that article was to indicate how complicated this stuff is from a social constructivist point of view and just how difficult any social negotiation will be regarding a reconceptualization of the genders. (It certainly wasn’t because I agree with most of it, which I didn’t.) And the intensity and aggressiveness with which the issue is being pushed “Now! Now! Now!” and actual laws being passed to force people to use absurd pronouns and refer to individual people using plural pronouns like ‘they’ not only is not going to work, it’s going to decrease the likelihood of activists getting what they want.
And I can’t agree with you about Second Wave feminism. Sure there were excesses, and few people probably dislike the Catherine Mackinnons and Andrea Dworkins of the world than me. But I can remember when the only women in the workplace were secretaries. Second Wave feminism played an enormous role in helping create the world we have now, where women can pursue pretty much any profession they like, all the way up the ladder. That represents an unprecedented, complete transformation of our society for the better, so I categorically reject the claim that “they have created more problems than they have solved.”
Hi Dan, missed your post before posting my last one to you. You just answered some of what I said to you, so let me make updates…
“Sure we have.”
Look, that really does not look like what he was saying, and someone else saw it the same way I did. That said, I am a guy that believes you have to accept what a person says they meant (no matter how stretched it seems) rather than insisting on the point.
Since I see that Couvent has agreed he meant what you said…
“It gets at the intuition-based question of whether trans women are women in the relevant gender senses. And I stand by my claim that they are not.”
Then the hypothetical itself is flawed in that it assumes these transwomen are not like real transwomen in sports, and also requires them to be unjust and uninterested in actual sports. But ignoring that, Labnut just gave a case where a biological woman opens up the notion she might not be *relevant* to women’s sports, because of a hormonal balance that does not in any way effect the reality that she is a woman.
At best this hypothetical… and the argument you have been making… realizes something about demands people make regarding identity, not something about what makes a real woman (or man). Demands are going to be context dependent. Sometimes it will be based on born biology, sometimes on current physiology, and sometimes broad-based gender will be ok.
“And I stand by my claim that they are not. If the current corporate CEO disparities were addressed by filling the gaps with trans women I don’t think anyone would be satisfied that the problem had been solved.”
Well you are wrong about some sports, as I have shown.
I do agree about the fact that no one would be satisfied with corporate CEO disparities being “fixed” in the way suggested. As I said (which still applies) neither would the CEOs, or the transgenders unless we assume their base immorality, so bang up hypothetical that is.
I’m still working on figuring out how hypotheticals, leading to thought experiments about the nature of gender identity and not indicating any potential realities, leads to chastising actual people for not understanding the bon mot about individual rights.
Dwayne: By disparities in sports, I meant the sort of thing that Title IX was created to address, in terms of disparate funding.
I also don’t agree that I made a “mistake” with respect to dysphoria.
Dan… Argh, we keep cross-posting. I will post this last bit and let you have the last word (to my last post or this).
“And the intensity and aggressiveness with which the issue is being pushed “Now! Now! Now!” and actual laws being passed to force people to use absurd pronouns and refer to individual people using plural pronouns like ‘they’ not only is not going to work, it’s going to decrease the likelihood of activists getting what they want.”
We are in agreement about almost all of this, particularly about the legal techniques and coercion. The specific issue of choice of pronouns? Eh. I’ve seen things I thought wouldn’t work catch on. Some became president.
“But I can remember when the only women in the workplace were secretaries. Second Wave feminism played an enormous role in helping create the world we have now, where women can pursue pretty much any profession they like, all the way up the ladder. That represents an unprecedented, complete transformation of our society for the better, so I categorically reject the claim that “they have created more problems than they have solved.”
I’m the same age as you so we’ve seen the same things. Clearly we will continue to disagree on this. Given that we’re two old white dudes, I suppose it really doesn’t amount to much which group we think did more harm or good.
At least things have gotten better, and hopefully will continue.
I’m confused. You think Second Wave feminism *did not* play a huge role in this development? I would argue that’s straightforwardly, factually false.
Hi Dan, sorry for the delayed response I was out all day yesterday.
“You think Second Wave feminism *did not* play a huge role in this development? I would argue that’s straightforwardly, factually false.”
I was actually talking about disagreeing on how much damage it caused (toxic cultural products), compared to any betterments.
Again, I don’t see much point in arguing about this, but I guess I will set out a more detailed explanation of my position.
There is absolutely no question that 2nd Wave played a huge role in the development (perhaps shaping is a better term) of the women’s rights movement, and altering cultures across the world. You can’t escape that fact. There wouldn’t be anything for me to complain about if they had been ineffectual… they would simply be forgotten.
Regarding contribution to women’s rights, I can’t say what % 2W actually made to any progress. This is not to claim or suggest they made zero, little, or less than majority contribution. I’m openly saying I don’t know. What I do believe is that it cannot claim sole credit, or that if not for 2W such progress would not have occurred. That it did play a role, did help generate progress, is factual and a credit.
The flipside of this comes in two forms.
First, is that there were plenty of women, feminists and non-feminists*, who disliked 2W, did not have any part in that movement, and also helped generate the progress we are talking about. I personally prefer to credit the people and not the sub-movements for having achieved progress because the entirety of the women’s rights movement has been a diverse team effort. Given all the women I have known that loathed 2W and yet worked for specific rights, including during the period where 2W held prominence, it is odd for me to say 2W gets some sort of special credit… that would seem to dishonor the rest.
Second, is that I do hold each sub-movement accountable (for good or ill) for any additional products they bring to the culture, and for which you can’t really look to other sources. 2W has been terrible for *other* civil rights issues, especially free speech and sexual rights, of both women and men. Part of this was promoting a victimhood culture and identity politics with many toxic spinoff products (like language policing and legal acts in place of social negotiation). Ironically, you have spent much time skewering one of these as being a major problem in modern society, including in the essay above. Without 2W we would not have the bizarre manifestations which are costing the left its political capital.
Maybe that last statement isn’t fair. Perhaps they would have arisen without 2W (and then I’d blame that source). But historically it did arise or spinoff from their works. Which again, is why I laughed at the first article. To watch them get tagged with the same BS I watched them tag people with when I was younger… nice.
The energy and commitment and work of 2W feminists is great. I just don’t want to confuse the laudable work, with the detrimental work, as if the latter were required for the former.
*when I mention non-feminists, and there are a lot, I mean women who disavow being feminists, not engaging with stated ideals and causes. Some of course fought reforms, preferring status quo, while others fought for individual rights, while not seeing (or interested in knowing) how that was connected with broader ideology. Roe of Roe v. Wade can hardly be said to be insubstantial in the women’s rights movement, yet she was decidedly not a feminist ideologue, and later regretted the decision and her part in it.
“It’s also worth noting that the essay is not about trans. And yet, predictably, that’s the part that everyone’s fixated on. I knew that would happen, but it’s disappointing nonetheless.”
Rebuke duly noted. Sexual behaviour has become the nation’s fixation in a way never seen before outside Ottoman harems. Soon the nation’s horizon will extend no further than its genitals and the discussion seems determined to confirm this trend.
A blurb from the forthcoming book by David J Friend
Is it a triumph? Or a sign of decline?
Hi Labnut, I had let Dan’s comment go (about his essay not being about trans) because I didn’t want to start a new argument. Since, you have mentioned it and expanded on it to make discussions of sexuality symptomatic of a societal problem, I am now going to respond, to his comment and then yours.
First, regarding Dan’s statement, I fully understood it was not about trans, and yet when I attempted to move beyond that subject matter, I was bizarrely accused of Hitlerism… when I explained how my expansion to an example using race (beyond his given, and easy Dolezal example) was appropriate, there was crickets. So he sort of self-limited discussion to trans.
Second, your comment about US fixation on sexual behavior is accurate in some sense, but totally misses the context, and is highly inappropriate to this particular topic (trans rights). There is no person more fixated on sex than the prude, and the West has been in the grip of prudes and prudish religions* for millenia. In the US, the culture is more heavily influenced by this puritanical moralizing than Europe, and so intensely fixated on sex. It is more exciting, either in the doing or the condemning. That’s how you get farces like an Attorney General covering up breasts of Greek statues, IIRC one depicting Justice. National outrage and discussion after seeing a second of Janet Jackson’s breast on TV. Or the slew of anti-sex moralizing, conservative Republican politicians and religious leaders caught up in sleazy sex scandals. It seems the Devil really is in the details.
Regarding the issue of trans rights, what does that have to do with an obsession about sex? Unless you are talking about the obsession of those trying to fight it, trans rights are about the difference between physiological sex (not the activity) and gender identity. Again, this can include issues like intersex which can hardly be said to come from societal fixation on sexual behavior. Unfortunately, due to fear of the unknown, and sex-fearing prudes, honest discussions about these minorities have been limited until modern times, and expanded due to better information sharing technologies.
*And not just prudish, but intensely focused on sexual organs. Long before there were sex change operations, there was male and/or female genital mutilation mandated by the leading religions of the West (and midEast).
Hi Couvent, there is a saying that the best defense is a good offense. And I’ve found that in the web, *taking* great offense is often used when no defense is possible. I have a suspicion this is what just happened, and after reading back through our exchange I want to make some observations and conclusions…
1) My reply to you started with, reinforced in the middle, and ended with the idea you were influenced by reading too much feminist ideology, and so came up with some crazy scenarios which I was refuting to calm you down. My intent, and that is the only straightforward read, is that I was assuming you were *not* a bigot and that by pointing to the claim’s extreme flaws, and it’s similarities to other arguments that are widely accepted as flawed, you would drop it like a hot potato. That those earlier, similar arguments were made by bigots only served to make the potato a little hotter. It would make no sense (logically or thematically) for me to have dropped some serious bombshell accusation that you are in fact a bigot in the middle of everything else.
So, if you really were offended, it took work on your side.
2) Dan gave a valiant (and actual) defense of the claims I was refuting, by arguing not against the refutation (if anything they hold) but that I had strawmanned you. However, the idea that your claims were mere intuition pumps to consider the concept of “woman” is also not a straightforward read of your writing, and require that the claims be pulled out of context from everything else in your reply.
You started that section with…
“But the article highlighted in some weird way a problem I haven’t been thinking about enough. Wouldn’t this self-identification as a certain gender be detrimental to women in the first place?”
… reinforced that concept in the middle by saying…
“Biological women would be wiped from the charts if society (and therefore sports associations) would accept self-identification as a female. Biological women would simply disappear from view.”
… and ended with…
“He always says: “your rights stop where mine begin”. Do self-identification activists know that bon mot?”
There is no language suggesting any change in subject from potential threat that should be a concern, to hypothetical intuition pumps… and the conclusion chastising real people makes no sense outside the context of a potential threat.
So, I call BS on that idea. If you really want to maintain that was your intent, I will accept your claim, but I doubt it, think your writing terribly misleading if it was, and the end sentence in need of explanation. Where did it come from? What did it mean?
Plus, making it an intuition pump arguably makes it worse. Your only stated target is “self-identification activists”, and yet your “pumps” only depict unjust cheats who would be using those activists (and actual transgenders) as much as anyone else. You think activists would support that kind of activity? Why? Why would they not care about other women? I doubt even the most whimsical of Millenials would think nothing’s wrong if out of the blue Mike Tyson said “I’m a girl” and began pummelling women across all weight categories in the ring. Yeah, it is more than mere words. If I were to take any other rights activists, and then use such gross caricatures of them, would it help to say the outrageous claims were just “intuition pumps”? And it raises the question why you’d require such apocalyptic proportion of threat to women, to make the simple statement that you could have cheats. That only acts to make transactivists look like a threat, without adding anything to the point.
3) Your exact “fear the effects of self-identification” argument is being used by anti-LGBT activists and not as “intuition pumps”. I refuse to link and so send traffic to such people, but you can Google to check my claims (if you doubt), one is Brandon Morse and another David Kupelian (and his book “The Snapping of the American Mind”).
Morse wrote, “If men can claim to be women and invade a sport that only women are allowed to compete in, then it’s a safe bet men will win. All the accolades, rewards, and recognition will be taken from the women who rightfully deserve them and given to a man who essentially cheated by putting on makeup, injecting himself with hormones, and saying he’s a woman.”
Kupelian argues the same thing and goes further… “The insanity of this affects not just the transgendered individual and the women athletes thus victimized. It also contributes to a sort of mass delusion infecting our whole society in which, thanks to the influence of the powerful LGBT movement, everybody now has to either affirm the absurd and crazy – that a man who is essentially a female impersonator can fairly compete against women – or they have to suffer abuse and persecution as bigots just for speaking the truth.” …Plus…
“This sexual anarchy movement – which, for example, recently announced dozens of brand-new genders that never existed in the history of humanity until a few years ago – is really part of a revolutionary political movement rooted in a mixture of personal trauma, utopian ideology and demonic forces that is unfortunately ever-expanding in today’s America.”
Uh, yeah. So if you want to use the irrational talking points of anti-LGBTs as hypothetical “intuition pumps” be my guest. But it seems as offensive as it is gratuitous to make your point.
4) I take back my apology. I doubt you were actually offended and, even if you were, your (by proxy) defense is arguably more offensive than what you (falsely) accused me of saying. Not sure how it was missed (or not commented on by anyone else) that the functional conclusion (pump or not) is that all transactivists are bigoted cheats, or dupes of them.
I feel certain you are not a bigot, and did not mean to convey such a message. I think you made a mistake, and in refusing to fess up, dug a deeper hole.
I just wanted to clarify something, before there is a misunderstanding (and possible uproar). In my last reply to Labnut I referred to “male and/or female genital mutilation”. Yes, that meant circumcision (for both). No, the language does not mean I am against it. If it seems too dramatic (though I maintain it is accurate) I’m willing to call it by a more neutral term such as “surgery” or “alteration” or “modification.” I don’t want to get into an argument about its legitimacy.
The essay was not about trans. That should be obvious from reading it.
I certainly didn’t accuse you of Hitlerism. I accused you of using “reductio ad Hitler” style arguments in comparing your interlocutor’s views to that of an old school racist.
While this is to Couvent, parts can certainly apply to me, so let me just be clear about one thing.
To the extent to which feminist and trans concerns clash, I am certainly, undoubtedly more sympathetic to the feminist ones, both for intellectual and emotional reasons.
As indicated in the essay and in my comments, aside from cases of gender dysphoria, I am not particularly interested in or sympathetic to the more “pop” gender fluidity movement. It’s not just that I find many of the most visible personalities unsympathic, but that I find the claims of radical social constructivism involved to be both intellectually convoluted (for the reasons discussed in the essay) as well as very unappealing.
I’m sorry if this is offensive to you, but these are my views. It seems like our exchanges as of late have become harsher and more unpleasant, which I lament, and to the extent that I am culpable, I am sorry for it.
Hi db,
I don’t know how to react to what you write, because I get the impression that we actually largely agree on many things. As far as understand we agree that social practices based on gender, biological sex and the relation between those two are deeply embedded in society. We also seem to agree that self-identification as a certain gender doesn’t make the difficult questions about the relation between gender and biological sex go away.
By the way, I never wanted to say something about transgenders and people with gender dysphoria. They aren’t the subject of Dan’s OP, and I thought that was clear.
We seem to agree that some sort of social consensus should be reached, and perhaps we even agree that males who want to identify as women should conduct the social negotiations (a metaphor, of course) with women in the first place and not with white male patriarchy in the first place. (I don’t know where you got the idea I thought the self-identifying males are themselves part of white male patriarchy).
Now the examples. You noticed that they aren’t realistic. They weren’t meant to be. I made them on purpose rather farfetched, because I wanted to avoid discussions about the examples. They were so farfetched – especially the one about the boardrooms – that I couldn’t imagine someone wouldn’t understand they were chosen to illustrate an idea. Do you really believe I think the US women’s soccer team is going to be beaten in the next WC final by a team consisting of 6 biological women and 5 males who identify as women? But to my great astonishment, you turned it into a discussion about the examples.
But OK, these things happen. I don’t mind you didn’t understand the purpose of my examples. Differences of style, etc.
But then there was the suggestion of racism. That was a mistake. You know it was. A real mensch would have admitted it immediately. Everybody makes mistakes, even you and me.
I have little theory about this particular mistake. I’ll leave it to the others here to judge it. My theory is that discourse has become quite a bit harder in the US in the last decades. When I was living in Texas in the beginning of the century, I noticed that educated, intelligent 20 yr. old women would say without hesitation “I’ll kill her if she does that!”
Kill her? I’m way over 50 now, and don’t think I’ve said “I’ll kill him” three times in my life. In the US, however, it seemed to be rude but quite common. These young women didn’t realize what they just said, and I think you didn’t realize what you actually wrote when you made the comparison with blacks in sports. Circumstantial evidence for my theory comes from the fact that Dan at first didn’t even notice what you wrote.
DB,
“There is no person more fixated on sex than the prude, and the West has been in the grip of prudes and prudish religions* for millenia. In the US, the culture is more heavily influenced by this puritanical moralizing than Europe, and so intensely fixated on sex”
This kind of harsh judgemental statement is quite out of place. You will deny this but you are plainly creating the implication that I am a prude for having made my earlier statement and of course your mention of ‘prudish religions’ is a wholly unwarranted dig at myself and my Catholic faith. Pejorative language and implications are wrong, undesirable and must be stopped. I think Couvent would agree with me.
But worse still, I think your statement is a reflexive, unthinking labelling of people that you do not agree with. It is not a form of argument that shows any insight.
Let me quickly state the obvious and you will see what I mean. Sex is one of our most powerful drives. It is so powerful that society carefully limits its expression. There are no exceptions. It is always channelled and limited. All that varies is the place we put limits. Placing the limits on sexual behaviour in different places does not make one a prude. It means quite simply that one has reached different moral and practical judgements than you have.
You may question which limits are appropriate but you will inevitably conclude that some limits are necessary. As an example of this you will agree(I hope) that sex with children is wrong. That is a well agreed limit and we don’t call people prudes for insisting on this limit. But what about the case of sex with your neighbour’s 17 year old daughter? It is perfectly legal but her father will be outraged by your behaviour. Is he a prude? Or is he a concerned father who wishes to protect his impressionable daughter from older men? Now what about having sex with your neighbour’s wife? It is perfectly legal but he will be tempted to break your skull. Is he a prude for having different standards of sexual conduct or is he protecting the sanctity of his marriage? Turn that around, how will you feel if he has sex with your wife? Does that make you a prude? Consider this. You go walking in a public park with your young daughters and you come across a couple openly engaged in vigorous sex. What do you do? Do you stop and gaze on while you say to your young daughters, ‘that is how it is done, their technique is really good!’ Or do you hurry off? Does that make you a prude?
Society always, everywhere, all the time, places limits on sexual expression. There are no exceptions. This is not prudery. This is a necessary practical and moral judgement of when, where and how sexual expression may take place. Other people may place the limits in different places than you do. The easy, cheap and thoughtless thing to do is to accuse them of prudery. But if you stop, inquire and think about it you will discover they are thoughtful people who have given the matter careful consideration and do not deserve pejorative labels.
Hi Dan, before I start my reply, keep in mind I am not angry, answering in some challenging way, or trying to extend argument. I am explaining my position and, if anything, hope this moves towards something positive.
“The essay was not about trans. That should be obvious from reading it.”
I agree. I thought it was obvious. You had even touched on race, but it could lend itself to other issues.
“I certainly didn’t accuse you of Hitlerism. I accused you of using “reductio ad Hitler” style arguments”
That’s what I meant by “Hitlerism”. I guess I should have been more clear, sorry about that. The point remains the same. I thought I was doing the conversation a service by moving beyond trans issues, to get to (explore) what problems you had with social constructs and proponents coming in with strong “insistence” against common usage. And while there is no question the word was used by hardcore bigots, at the time Baldwin was making his case against it, it was used by many people, including those who were not bigots but did not understand how it was taken by people actually suffering oppression. They had simply grown up with the usage and did not understand the problem. He was shaking them awake to this.
In fact, the usage was so commonplace in some regions and times (in the US) that Twain captured it in his book Huckleberry Finn, which is considered a classic. Despite that status, censorship is considered ok today by some who generally promote free-speech, because of the power that word is conceived to hold in today’s society compared to its casual use (not by racists) in the book (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/huckleberry-finn-and-the-n-word-debate/). It would seem Lenny Bruce is right, and yet thoroughly dead.
So, I thought that was the direction I was taking the conversation. And you cut it off by arguing it as a reductio ad Hitler. I explained why it was not, and you did not continue discussion. That is why I was surprised when you later commented this was supposed to be about more than trans. I let it go, but it’s not like I wanted to turn it into, or keep it, about trans.
“To the extent to which feminist and trans concerns clash, I am certainly, undoubtedly more sympathetic to the feminist ones, both for intellectual and emotional reasons.”
I’m sympathetic to both feminist and trans sides. Outside of the extremist positions of either, they both have points. The problem is that they both can’t come out on top, and so there must be a negotiation. If the extremists are allowed to hold the dominant positions in the negotiation it won’t come to much (which is what we saw in the articles). I don’t mind if you side more with the feminist position, that’s the reason it ends up having to be a negotiation: there will be people coming down on different sides. You can’t hold that against people.
“It’s not just that I find many of the most visible personalities unsympathic, but that I find the claims of radical social constructivism involved to be both intellectually convoluted (for the reasons discussed in the essay) as well as very unappealing.”
Ok, I think I probably side with you on most of that. While I have no issue with exploring gender fluidity, the language policing issues (and expansion of pronouns… why not just eliminate gendered pronouns?) is something I’m not a big fan of. Again, this goes back to my dislike of 2nd Wave language policing. Most of it is absurdity with no real use beyond cosmetics.
Given what you just said, I am somewhat curious… wouldn’t you agree that many of the most visible personalities of 2W were unsympathetic?
“It seems like our exchanges as of late have become harsher and more unpleasant, which I lament, and to the extent that I am culpable, I am sorry for it.”
This is true, and I’m pretty sure if we were talking in person this wouldn’t be happening (and wish we shared more favorable time zones to make that happen more often). I’ve found the internet, and perhaps writing in general, to make conversations more hostile and aggressive, lead to more confusion, than it ever had to be. Perhaps it is because there is a lack of seeing body language and hearing vocal cues to actual intent and meaning.
I also find it interesting (and I don’t understand the reason) that people on roughly the same side of an argument, end up getting into the most bitter disputes over the small bits of sunlight between their positions.
As part of constructive criticism along these lines, if there seems to be an issue from your side, I would say it is taking my writing as more angry and with containing more loaded meaning than is there. In this thread there were two instances of my bringing up race, neither of which was meant to smear anyone in any way, and yet you felt that is what I was doing. One thing I might recommend is that if you see something that seems surprising or disappointing for me to be saying (particularly if it is outrageous), assume that may not be the case, and ask me to clarify before getting upset and arguing against that position.
If you see something from my side that I can improve, I am open to constructive criticism (BTW, this is open to everyone, not just Dan).
Hi Couvent, and still…
“… I get the impression that we actually largely agree on many things. As far as understand we agree that social practices based on gender, biological sex and the relation between those two are deeply embedded in society. We also seem to agree that self-identification as a certain gender doesn’t make the difficult questions about the relation between gender and biological sex go away.”
Yes, that is correct.
“I never wanted to say something about transgenders and people with gender dysphoria. They aren’t the subject of Dan’s OP, and I thought that was clear.”
Although they are not the sole subject of Dan’s essay, they naturally fall within its scope. When you gave your target, it was broadly enough worded that it had to include them. But, as I said, even if we limit it to the mere whimsical variety of the movement, where we would likely agree there are problems, your arguments were themselves problematic.
“perhaps we even agree that males who want to identify as women should conduct the social negotiations (a metaphor, of course) with women in the first place and not with white male patriarchy in the first place. (I don’t know where you got the idea I thought the self-identifying males are themselves part of white male patriarchy).”
Yes, we would agree on that. If you want to know where I got my idea, go back and read the comment I reacted to. You give only one target, and it is not the “white, male patriarchy” separate from the “self-identification movement.” It is only in your reply to me, you first mention the WMP, and so I was forced to assume you meant (or included) the SIM. Otherwise, your reply does not connect with mine at all.
“But to my great astonishment, you turned it into a discussion about the examples.”
Sir, you made the examples important by fronting, reinforcing, and ending with a discussion about the threat that SIM posed to women. The examples (by any straightforward read) were meant as evidence to support (even if theoretical) a *threat* posed by SIM.
Now we can leave the examples out entirely, if you wish, and discuss the front, middle, and end comments alone. I will point out that *you* are making it solely about the examples, by refusing to address my criticism of your end chastisement of real people posing some sort of threat to women’s civil rights. Why did you make it? Without a potential threat to real women, the examples being somewhat valid, where did that patronizing admonition come from?
My guess is the sound of crickets will continue to be the only answer I get.
That or the rattling sound of an old Dodge going by…
“But then there was the suggestion of racism. That was a mistake. You know it was. A real mensch would have admitted it immediately.”
Holy… I have already explained (twice) how it was not. And how someone else thought the same thing about your example. There was no mistake, and here I will make the same statement again to drive the point home: your claim about a threat to women in sports, posed by men who self-identify as women, is *reminiscent* of the same worries people had about blacks wiping out whites if they were allowed to compete. In short: the claim is bizarrely irrational, real threats would not be posed (as I argued in the original reply), and so cannot be used to tarnish the idea of SIM.
I agree, a real mensch would have admitted they made a mistake. Immediately. Mine wasn’t. I even apologized… immediately… when I thought you had taken some actual offense, even if it was mistaken. It took a day or so to figure out what was really going on.
I’m comfortable with people reading through our exchange and figuring out the difference between your charge and my actual intent and so the meaning of what I said. It is clear by any straightforward read, of the sentence, and in context of the entire reply.
“My theory is that discourse has become quite a bit harder in the US in the last decades. ”
Well that is certainly true. But it has nothing to do with me. Perhaps your experiences have led you to read more loaded meaning into what people say, than is actually there. Or maybe, as I have found in the hardening of dialogue, you are engaged in a dodge, by using a smear to avoid actual criticism.
Given human psychology, it could be you even feel it is true, just so you can avoid the actual meaning and so weight of the criticism. Nothing to do with you being a bigot. All about using a historically bad form of argument.
“I think you didn’t realize what you actually wrote when you made the comparison with blacks in sports. Circumstantial evidence for my theory comes from the fact that Dan at first didn’t even notice what you wrote.”
I know *exactly* what I wrote. I have adequately defended what I wrote. And as I said, someone else had the exact same opinion of your claim, agreeing my loose analogy was not just not insulting, but directly comparable (which was not even what I said).
The fact that Dan had not found it problematic at first could be for many reasons (perhaps he never even saw it). However, I do see how you *misinterpreted* it, and by pulling it out of context of the rest of my reply, made it seem like a possible interpretation.
BTW, I’m closing on 50 and have lived outside the US for quite some time.
Anyway, I *am* sorry that this exchange has been so frustrating. Hopefully future exchanges will be more positive and fruitful. I don’t remember our being in any major conflict before.
> My guess is the sound of crickets will continue to be the only answer I get.
You got it right.
I don’t mind disagreeing with people etc.
But no way I’m going to have discussions with people who throw around suggestions of racism like you do.
Hi Couvent,
“You got it right.”
I know.
You have no answer to that very simple question, so the only thing you have left is to make it about *me* instead of the actual argument…
Like so…
“But no way I’m going to have discussions with people who throw around suggestions of racism like you do.”
Throw around? Are you seriously upping the charges now?
I’ve explained many times already that I was not suggesting anything about your being racist (in fact stating a few times since that I don’t think you are), and what the analogy was actually about.
Here I will say it again: I don’t think you are a racist, and in no way intended to suggest you were.
Seriously, you need to chill out.
I remain hopeful that future exchanges will go better.
> I remain hopeful that future exchanges will go better.
So do I.
> I’m comfortable with people reading through our exchange and figuring out the difference between your charge and my actual intent and so the meaning of what I said. It is clear by any straightforward read, of the sentence, and in context of the entire reply.
Your actual intent? Context?
And what about the “actual intent” and the “context” of the others participating on Electric Agora?
To have a fruitful discussion two thing are necessary.
1) A common language in which words, expressions etc. have a common meaning and common denotations.
2) The assumption of good faith.
Both are lacking in our exchanges, the second one very predominantly from your side, if I may say so.
There was no assumption of good faith when you associated something I wrote with racism.
There will be no further discussions between us about this issue.
Have a nice day.
Couvent and Dwayne: I think you guys have gone around enough on this. Let’s just drop it.