Just imagine
I saw this.
https://twitter.com/janeclarejones/status/1136680203269365760
So I followed the link and skim-read Justin Weinberg’s “won’t somebody please think of the trans women” piece. I was not overwhelmed by the reasoning therein. I was annoyed by bêtises like the one Jane points out. There are lots of them. The whole thing is written from the assumption that on the one hand there are cis people, lolling about on fluffy pillows of privilege, and on the other there are trans people, battling oppression and exclusion of a kind that we cis people can’t even begin to imagine.
For instance, right at the beginning:
Understanding t philosopher
Remember t philosopher? That’s the one who wrote that Medium piece full of hyperbolic self-pity and zero awareness of anyone else’s experiences with exclusion and oppression.
Reader, what do you do when you are confronted with the anguish of another person? I hope it is at least this: you try to understand. Sometimes it may be easy to understand, but sometimes, owing to qualities of the person suffering, or the kind of person you are and experiences you’ve had, or the circumstances you’re in, it may not be easy. You may not identify with their suffering, you may be puzzled by its depth, you may be put out by its expression, you may think it involves mistakes—but before responding in ways that don’t take someone’s suffering as seriously as the person undergoing it, you should try to understand it.
See? There it is already – the bizarre assumption that all of us reading are immune from exclusion, prejudice, mockery, insult, abuse – from, in fact, any kind of anguish.
There is also the now-familiar credulity, and not just credulity but insistence that we must all be credulous too. It apparently doesn’t even cross his mind that the “anguish” might be pumped up for effect, might be a political ploy, might be part of a larger picture of hyperbolic anguish that is brandished at women as a way to make them stop talking.
He goes on.
Do you love philosophy? Do you feel at home in this work? Do you think you wouldn’t be as fulfilled if you had a different kind of career? Many readers of Daily Nous will answer “yes” to these questions. This means that many readers will know where t philosopher is starting from.
Now imagine that when you take part in activities other professional philosophers do, unlike most of those other professional philosophers, you are made to feel quite bad. Yes, some philosophers may feel bad because they don’t think their work meets their own standards, or because of criticism by others, or because of stress to get work done, but this is different. It’s not about your work; rather, you are being made to feel bad—really bad—because of a characteristic of yours such as your race, or gender, or sexuality, or ethnicity, etc. In fact, it is so horrible that it is interfering with your mental and emotional well-being. Further, it is so unlike what most of your colleagues experience that most of them don’t understand it, and so fail to take it seriously, or think less of you for complaining about it, which of course makes it even worse. And now, unlike most other philosophers, you have to choose between doing what you love and preserving a minimally decent level of mental and emotional health.
Yes, imagine that, except many women and people of color don’t need to “imagine”; they know what it’s like from experience.
It’s as Jane says. He really doesn’t have the first fucking clue.
Updating to add a comment on Justin Weinberg’s post:
Also, trans-exclusive feminists complaining about violent messages and images clearly are not experts in the history of feminism or are willfully ignorant of the use of violent images in the history of women’s liberation. Trans women using violent imagery to promote their own liberation is only within the same historical millieu of all their feminist foremothers. Whining about “abuse” etc is just obfuscatory bad faith sophistry on the part of the trans-exclusive and used to engender sympathy from a public that is less plugged in to the discourse.
I’m so glad I’m not plugged in to that discourse.
And once again, biological sex fails to make the list. That is usually why I am made to feel bad – really bad – because I am a woman.
I found this whole line of argument infuriating–SO MANY women have been driven out of their chosen and loved professions (including philosophy, which is in general extremely misogynistic, and I’ve had my own runins with academic philosophers which have not led me to question this) and this receives zero outpourings of performative empathy from any man.
I know. Philosophy is notoriously bad on this. I did a big ol’ feature on it once for The Philosophers’ Magazine.
Science is bad on it, too. Good old boys network, and all that. And they couch it in the language of Evo Psych so it sounds all sciency – women’s brains, neurology, and all that stuff. My young colleague who has made it clear to me that our brains are being bathed in different hormones, therefore different ways of thinking – implicitly, of course, one better at thinking all sciency (guess which one?).
I have also discovered theatre is bad in this way. Yes, a very liberal field, and yet plays are steeped in patriarchal assumptions, women do not get equal opportunities, and on the offchance some pesky feminist should write a play with strong women characters, and that play should get chosen for performance (how that happens? Mistake, I’m sure), we must make sure we fuss with the character until the patriarchy is happy.
The thing that surprised me? I’m married to a librarian, and he has told me this field dominated by women is the same way. Men get the promotions. Men get the supervisory positions. And men go to conferences and act like out of control teenagers because there are women around, leading to the same kinds of sexual misadventures we see at skeptic’s conferences, church camps, and Earth First! outings.
Justin Weinberg wrote, unironically,
I’m not proud of this, but I know enough of 4chan to know a comment signed “t” means:
(emphasis mine), e.g. in the comments of my link above,
That’s how I understand t philosopher. I don’t mean the racial aspect, I mean the ironic aspect, e.g. Norm Macdonald saying I was being sarcastic.
I am surprised that Weinberg and others seem not to be considering the possibility that “t philosopher” is a parody. What Dave Ricks posted above seems compelling enough. Is it just because “t” could be “trans”? Why, then, not just use “trans” in the name?
I was surprised about that at first but then I saw somewhere – maybe the post, or on a post of Weinberg’s on Facebook (which I can’t find any more; he probably made all his posts friends only) – that the person writing didn’t know know who t philos is but some friends do. If that’s true then presumably t philos isn’t a fake and the post is genuine self-pitying histrionics rather than parody.