He’s not interested in the details
Breathtaking.
Kathleen Stock has a thread this morning.
PHILOSOPHY-RELATED THREAD. I think I’ve realised in last few days that the central objection of many philosopher-critics isn’t directly to do with my arguments. Rather, they’re concerned with what Austin would call perlocutionary effects/
— Kathleen Stock (@Docstockk) June 2, 2019
Quoting the rest for ease of reading.
Rather, they’re concerned with what Austin would call perlocutionary effects of my arguments. That is, the indirect effects of my arguments on feelings, thoughts, and actions of others, whether or not these are grounded in charitable or accurate interpretations of my views. In vain do I ask critics to engage with my writing (pinned) in a fair, non-snarky manner typical of their philosophical engagement with others. I’ve come to realise most won’t do this, because for them it’s not the point. The point is, my views allegedly lead to harm: fear/anxiety, people allegedly leaving the profession, and possible violence to trans people by others. Yet it seems to me that they’re equally or more guilty of indirectly causing such things. To uncharitably construe my views as harmful, for people who haven’t read them, is self-fulfilling, with respect to exactly the sort of harm they claim to be most worried about: spreading fear and anxiety amongst trans people. If they described me more accurately and less febrilely, this effect could be limited. So I finish by reminding my critics and other readers of my actual, stated views, with italics for emphasis. (See also my pinned tweet). I argue for:
Then she tagged several of those people. One was Jonathan Ichikawa. He replied.
Speaking for myself, I agree that:
1) I've argued that your rhetoric is doing great harm.
2) I'm not interested in the details of your arguments.Is it your view that it doesn't matter whether you're doing harm? Or are you planning to engage with the many arguments that it is?
— Jonathan Ichikawa (@jichikawa) June 2, 2019
To repeat:
Speaking for myself, I agree that:
1) I’ve argued that your rhetoric is doing great harm.
2) I’m not interested in the details of your arguments.
In other words, “I’ve accused you of doing great harm, I can’t be bothered to find out what you’ve actually argued.”
As I say: breathtaking.
Her critics are poisoning the well. Deliberately and with malice, hiding and denying the degree to which Stock is willing to support protections and rights for trans people.
Not enougfh, though. She’s still a witch.
Burn her.
Breathtaking indeed that someone so willfully ignorant and incapable of basic reasoning could be employed as a professor of philosophy. Naturally, he’s at UBC. What the hell is going on with everyone in Vancouver? Seems like almost every idiotic piece of trans-news comes out of BC.
Ichikawa:
How is it possible for her to “engage with the many arguments” (which she has done, many times) if no one will read the arguments she makes when she does so? She is allowed no recourse of any form at all.
Of course she has recourse.
She can apologize abjectly and renounce all of her positions.
Easy!
The fucking cheek:
“I will not address your arguments” and “you need to engage with my arguments” in the same tweet. How self-blind is this guy???
Oh and he’s a philosophy prof. Proof that philosophy is no guarantee of good reasoning.
Well, ad misericordiam is an argument, just a bad one.
#2 @Artymorty
Not everyone in Vancouver is like that. There is Meghan Murphy.
Maybe Ichikawa is just working with McKinnon’s The Norms of Assertion; Truth, Lies and Warrant:
Smearing TERFs must be one of those special contexts, right?
Sackbut, it’s obvious that to trans-activists, ‘engage with my arguments’ means ‘agree with my blanket statements’, since any actual engagement is ignored.
I’ve talked about this a bit in recent days – I think the extreme wealth that characterises Vancouver has contributed to the couple generations of people with really unreasonable ideas about what the world owes them that we’re dealing with now. People who grow up here are often extremely sheltered and spoilt by wealth. It skews their perception of what hardship and oppression are.
I didn’t grow up with anyone who paid for their education. Lots never held part-time jobs. Their weddings are paid for and homes are bought for them by their parents who can’t bear the thought of their precious babies having to leave the city they grew up in. They have very easy lives and a lot of time on their hands to navel-gaze.
The people here who do invest time and energy in absurd ideas like sex being a colonial construct are the born-into-wealth, unemployable-because-they-did-two-degrees-in-queer-studies folks. Yes, Vancouver has a LOT of those people are they’re VERY well represented at the two big universities here. Those views are COMPLETELY absent in much of Vancouver though. We also have two technical universities. There isn’t the slightest hint of queer or trans activism on those campuses. No one there entertains TRA beliefs and, even if they did, everyone is too goddamn busy to make telling lesbians they’re transphobes a hobby.
Transactivism is not the norm here. It is on arts campuses, which are populated by people who don’t know the value of a dollar and have a lot of time on their hands. We do have an abnormally large population of those folks, who are LOOOOOOUUUD on social media. They are not the general population though. Most of us a) know how dumb TRA arguments are and/or b) haven’t got any goddamn time to entertain them.
Actually, a woman friend and I were at dinner last night and were groaning about our inability to express our opinions in some settings because neither of us toes the SJW line. I almost never run into these scenarios because of the field I’m in. I did have an anecdote from the last six months though of a situation where I had to bite my tongue for an hour because I didn’t hold the popular opinion and dissenting would have resulted in social isolation I couldn’t afford at the time. I no longer have to interact with, much less be liked by, that circle of people so it’s no longer of any concern.
My friend, though, works with a disadvantaged community so she deals with SJW beliefs including TRA beliefs daily. This stuff is much more tiring for her because it influences her day-to-day life. It’s largely irrelevant to my life, professionally or personally, so while it’s frustrating when I do encounter it, it doesn’t take the toll on me that it does on others.
@Colin Day #7
Ain’t that the truth. And you’d think someone in philosophy would recognize that. Do they not study argument any more?
Then there’s the fact that even IF you accept the appeal to pity as reasonable, much if not most of trans activists’ appeals are to fraudulent statistics.