The very validity of their standing within society
Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber has a more reasonable, less vituperative dissenting response to the letter to the Times.
Last Sunday a
tletter appeared in the Sunday Times attacking the LGBT charity Stonewall for its work with British universities as a threat to academic freedom.
That’s why I had to say “less vituperative” as opposed to “non-vituperative.” The letter doesn’t attack Stonewall.
The letter was signed by some reasonably prominent figures, such as Kathleen Stock (Sussex) and Leslie Green (Oxford) as well as motley others (including a Brexit Party candidate). It is no accident that the letter appeared in the Sunday Times, which together with its companion paper the Times has, for at least a year, maintained an almost daily campaign against transgender people and the organizations and individuals who support them and which has also been to the fore in attacking universities around largely spurious concerns about “free speech”.
That’s why I had to say “more reasonable” as opposed to “very reasonable.” It’s not true or reasonable to say that the Times has “maintained an almost daily campaign against transgender people,” because the campaign (or series of related articles, which I think are pretty far from daily) is not against transgender people, it’s in disagreement with some of the claims made by the transgender movement.
The letter to the Sunday Times was framed in terms of supposed threats to academic freedom posed by Stonewall guidance and training to universities. Of course, freedom of speech, inquiry and opinion within the academic community is of great importance. Stonewall too recognize that in their documents. But it is also vital that universities as places of education and as workplaces function as environments where everyone is able to participate and work together with dignity, rather than places where some are excluded or humiliated because of their race, sex, sexuality or gender identity.
Well, sure, depending on what we mean by certain words within that statement. Universities should be places where no one is humiliated; it’s pretty easy to assent to that. It’s not quite as easy to agree to the “excluded” part because (as I keep saying to the point of tedium) it depends what you mean. Universities do exclude lots of people – most people in fact. Universities have entrance requirements, and they charge tuition. Exclusion is key to their functioning in many ways. That’s not what Chris is talking about, but that’s just it – the words “inclusion” and “exclusion” are used more as slogans than as usefully accurate labels. I don’t know of anyone who wants to exclude transgender people from universities or disciplines or classes, and I don’t think simply declining to agree that transgender people are literally and in every sense the sex (gender) they identify as counts as unjust “exclusion.” I think Chris is saying, somewhat too indirectly, that trans people are excluded and humiliated unless everyone agrees that they are literally and in every sense the sex (gender) they identify as. I think that’s saying more than can be demonstrated.
The authors of the letter to the Times are, at best, cavalier in their attitude to the effects that this “debate” is having on trans people, who experience the very validity of their standing within society as put in question by the discourse around transgender.
I don’t really know what that means.
I wonder if it’s Chris who is being somewhat cavalier? I wonder if he’s considered the possibility that the validity of trans people’s standing within society depends much less on the compliance of the authors of the letter to the Times than it does on the population at large – people on the bus, people on the street, people at the pub, people at Waitrose, people at parties, and on and on.
Maybe the idea is that if academics “validate” trans people and their “standing within society” then the rest of the population will follow? But I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think it’s that easy.
The letter alleges that Stonewall seeks to ban from universities any outside speaker who questions “that trans people are the gender they say they are” but I see a factual claim — and a true one — about the effect of outside speakers who hold a range of views (including advocating conversion therapy) namely that such speakers “cause LGBT people to feel deeply unsafe”.
So it’s a true factual claim that outside speakers who hold a range of views (including advocating conversion therapy) “cause LGBT people to feel deeply unsafe”. So all the views of these outside speakers, no matter which views they are, cause LGBT people to feel deeply unsafe. That’s quite a large claim, and not a very fair one.
Just as the effect of speakers preaching hate against other groups may reasonably be take into account by universities in deciding to invite them onto campus, so trans people are entitled to similar protections.
But first you have to agree that the Outside Speakers are preaching hate, and they and we their friends or allies or both don’t agree to that. Kathleen Stock doesn’t preach hate. None of the gender critical philosophers I know preaches hate.
Comments are turned off on the post, which is a pity. I’d be interested to see what other philosophers think.
This turning-off of comments on posts containing tendentious, easily-refuted claims is becoming something of a thing in certain circles.
Perhaps Bertram did not want to have comments made in response to his post that might cause some to feel unsafe.
Or perhaps he did not want to have comments made in response to his post that anyone might feel able to claim to feel unsafe after reading which thereof.
I shouldn’t try to mind read. My apologies.
Oh no need, that wasn’t a rebuke. I think it’s fair to make guesses as to why a particular post is no-comments.
Mr. Bertram is at best cavalier in his attitude to human female people, who may experience their own “validity of their standing within society” (whatever that means) as put in question. (Female athletes, anyone?)
And what about trans people who agree with Stock et. al.? Well, never mind them. We can’t take into account anyone other than doctrinaire trans advocates–“transdogmaphiles”, perfect word, thank you, O. If we did, we might have to start examining the truth claims being made, and we can’t have that, because “validity” something something “unsafe” something shut up, TERF.
Backhanded compliments and guilt by association, lovely.
Additionally, it implies that all LGBT people are made to feel unsafe by these “outside speakers who hold a range of views (including advocating conversion therapy)” and that none of those same LGBT people are made to feel unsafe by the claim that males are wholly of the female sex if they declare it. Christ Bertram has perhaps forgotten about the L, as is common.
Chris* Bertram
@8, or “Christ, Bertram…” or indeed “Christ! Bertram…”
Punctuation can fix (almost) everything.
I have to say, despite Bertram’s response being “more reasonable, less vituperative” I also found it worse than some of the obviously irrational and unpleasant responses. Unless someone reads it thoughtfully, unpicking the phrasing, it could come across as reasonable. Once you do unpick it of course, it’s just as distasteful, but is more deceptive.
Why do people like Chris Bertram hold positions as philosophers? They don’t seem to be able to think coherently or argue very cogently. Do they perhaps first ‘identify’ as philosophers and then promptly get offered a position?
Re “advocating conversion therapy”, I think it would be difficult to prove that claim.
Sackbut, I think the ‘conversion therapy’ is more commonly known by its rather less emotive and infinitely more honest name of ‘counseling’.
So it’s a true factual claim (ouch, the redundancy) that finding male-bodied people in the women’s room can ’cause female people to feel deeply unsafe”.
But just women, so no problem, right?
To be fair, it’s not actually a redundancy in a philosophical argument. Philosophers go in for precision (which makes the lack of precision in the bollocks about “the very validity of their standing within society” and the rest of it all the more striking). Note the quoted bit where he says “I see a factual claim — and a true one” – fact claims can be false.
Rob @ 9 – Truth. I have to admit I found it more reasonable on the first quick read than I did when I read it more slowly and carefully for dissection. Hence my saying it in the first sentence and then taking most of it back in the following sentences. (Chris B. did a tweet yesterday playing off a line famous in philosophy circles about the bit where one says it and the bit where one takes it back. It was a dig at Brian Leiter.)
Rob@9, Ophelia@15:
Without intending to hijack the thread, I think the classic of the genre is: “… of course Ireland can only be re-united with the consent of the Ulster Protestants, but what they must realise is that that consent cannot be indefinitely withheld”.
This is the thing that has been bothering me since I started paying attention to the whole gender identity topic. As a philosophy undergrad, I would have been taken to task for even approaching the “quality” of reasoning, argumentation, and rhetoric employed by these nominal philosophers. Are these folks representative of the philosophical discipline? Perhaps merely that subset belonging to a particular region, age range, or other demographic?
Philosophers are ostensibly trained in recognizing and resisting poor arguments, so how did this happen?
O
What was Leiter’s supposed back-pedal?
Nullius in Verba
I wonder this all the time. I don’t think I would have gotten away with some of this sloppy reasoning as an undergrad. An undergrad majoring in something other than philosophy.
I don’t know that it was a back pedal – I have no idea what it meant. I know it was a dig at Leiter only because he said so.