First trans philosopher
Julian Baggini talks to fellow philosopher Sophie Grace Chappell at Prospect:
Eight years ago, Sophie Grace Chappell came out as the UK’s first trans philosopher.
Well, not trans philosopher. Real philosopher in the sense of having the right academic credentials; no “identifying as” required. Trans woman, i.e. man who identifies as a woman. His self-renaming is interesting. He started out as Timothy David John Chappell, which is a lot of male names to have to deal with. For his transformation he chose two female names that are also flattery names – I wonder if he and Sophie LaBelle are friends or rivals. (If you’re wondering why “Sophie” is flattering, it’s because “sophia” in Greek means wisdom. Philosophers of course are well aware of the etymology.)
I think this is kind of relevant. It’s almost as if he’s signaling. “I’m a trans woman, and I like to flatter myself.” Am I crazy for thinking that’s true of a lot of trans women? That the fad for being a trans women tends to attract self-flattering men and/or men who seek attention?
“We have a society at large where a lot of frankly very transphobic stuff has been normalised,” says Chappell. “It’s also a problem that a lot of the time people see this as a debate with two sides in a way that they wouldn’t see debates that are comparable about race or being gay.”
There’s a reason for that. Here’s the reason: it’s because they’re not comparable. Being trans isn’t like being Of Color or gay. It’s very different in several important ways. Sophie Grace Chappell is not like John Lewis or Alan Turing.
Chappell and her allies consider many gender-critical views to be transphobic. Nonetheless, she insists that “there are no questions that I refuse to engage with.” It’s the questioners she avoids, when she judges that they’re not “in good faith” or “getting it.”
Back atcha, pal.
So what are the things that gender-critical feminists say which Chappell believes shows they’re not listening? “I’ll give you three examples. First of all, trans women—they don’t normally talk about trans men in this context—are sexual predators, a threat to women’s safety. Secondly, there’s no such thing as a trans kid, and thirdly, trans people are delusional.”
The first one is dishonest. We don’t say trans women in general are sexual predators, we say we don’t know who is and the trans label is a perfect cover for men who are sexual predators.
The second one – how does Chappell know there is such a thing as a trans kid? How does he know, beyond a reasonable doubt, that kids who call themselves trans know they are trans and are not simply joining a trend aka a fashion?
The third one – does Chappell know for certain that all trans people really are the sex they say they are, which is the opposite of the one their bodies indicate? If so, how does he know that? The way I see it is that sex just is what the body indicates and that it’s absurd to insist that one is literally in every sense the Other sex. I’m not sure I would say “trans people are delusional” just like that, but I do think they’ve bought into a mass delusion. Once a mass delusion has taken hold, it’s not exactly delusional to buy into it, because buying into what other people have bought into is how we function in the social world. It’s more that they’re conforming to a delusion.
Julian points out that the more serious gender critical feminists don’t say such things.
“There can sometimes be inconsistencies between people’s comments on social media and what they put in their books, and often it’s not actually very clear which of two conflicting positions people really take,” she responds, at pains to avoid naming names. “You also find prominent people in that ideological neck of the woods who are quite happy, for example, to give approbation to people on social media who one would think of as much more violent activists, who say things like: ‘We should have guards with guns in women’s loos to keep the “transes” out.’”
More violent activists? The violence hasn’t been coming from the feminists. And anyone can make up stupid “say things like” pseudo-quotations, but I haven’t seen much if any talk of guards with guns.
Chappell would prefer to be on the same side as the gender-critical feminists, fighting for women’s rights against the patriarchy. “I don’t see why we shouldn’t agree some targets and work together towards those targets,” she says, such as resisting the attack on bodily autonomy represented by the overturning of Roe v Wade. Given the mistrust and animosity on both sides, however, such a united front looks distant.
For the same reason that BLM activists don’t always want to work together with white people. We don’t have skin in the game in the same way, so sometimes we just need to step back. It’s the same with men, however they identify: we don’t always want to work together with them to fight the patriarchy. The overturning of Roe v Wade isn’t an attack on Chappell the way it is on women. If he were a woman he would probably get that.
Or Grace Lavery.
He builds straw arguments to knock them down. I’d call that bad faith.
Also he doesn’t have a “theory of gender.” This is an important admission. No one does. There is no coherent explanation of how people can be trans, other than just “knowing.” For all those who claim that transgender is scientific, I can’t find an actual theory of gender. Referring to a gender identity contra biological sex, of course.
I wouldn’t trust his idea of what constitutes “transphobia” any farther than I could throw him. I wonder if any of these are on his list of normalized “transphobia?”
-Humans are sexually dimorphic
-Human sex is determined at conception and observable before birth.
-Humans can’t change sex.
-Homosexuality is based on same sex attraction.
All just statements of material reality. Not “normalized transphobia,” just simple observations of the way things are.
@3: How about: “Only women give birth.”
‘First of all, trans women—they don’t normally talk about trans men in this context—are sexual predators, a threat to women’s safety.’ Gosh, I wonder why those evil anti-trans demons are making a distinction between two types of trans people? I thought they hated all transes? What could possibly make those evil anti-trans demons be OK with one kind of trans and not the other? It’s a mystery.
Except, of course, from the genderism ideologues, who pose the bad faith, sneering, gotcha question: “What are you going to do? Post inspectors and/or guards with guns at the entrance to the loos?”
Maybe that’s where he got it. We’re to blame for their hyperbolic exclamations.
Is that the Sophie Grace Chappell who said that it did not matter if some women were murdered because men were allowed in women-only spaces? And he calls himself moderate and is surprised that women do not want to work with him?
A tidy summary of religion.
Quite. I didn’t mean it’s the opposite of delusional, just that there are compelling reasons for people to take cues from what everyone else believes.
(I say that because I didn’t recognize the quoted passage and had to seek it out to know which party I was going to disagree with, only to find that would be me.)
If “trans women” believe themselves to be women, then they are delusional.
This was one of the things that made me “gender-critical” back then when I was reading a certain blog platform a lot (one other things was the treatment of a certain blogger…): The same people who had just been explaining about “Schrödinger’s rapist” and chastising anyone who would not accept that concept were now suddenly telling us that we always and under all circumstances have to believe what people say about themselves.
And once again, re. the Schrödinger’s Rapist argument, forcing your presence on women who don’t want you there and not taking no for an answer, especially in settings where they are extra vulnerable, is a major red flag in its own right. So is reveling in hateful, violent rhetoric about making them suck your “lady cock”. As I understand it, the traditional “effeminate gay man” type of “transsexuals” were mostly just trying to fly under the radar and go unnoticed, so the ones who go out of their way to draw attention to themselves are almost certainly autogynephiles who are there specifically to satisfy their fetishes at women’s expense in the first place, which is once again a major red flag in itself.
Truth.
Sonderval –
It just drives me nuts. It so basic, and they all knew it, and had known it for years, and had based much about their lives on it, and yet suddenly – poof – all gone.
@Ophelia Benson
And it raises the question: Back when they talked about Schrödinger’s rapist, did they just do it to virtue signal and to have people to look down on? Since they just switched to something else with no thought about how these two ideas are totally incompatible.
I don’t think so. I can’t know what was in their heads of course, but I don’t think they did it just to virtue signal. I think it’s more to do with ferocious compartmentalization – walling off everything that could cast doubt on the trans ideology. But how they can persist in that year after year after year I can’t begin to understand.
Makes you despair somewhat that seemingly rational people can have such huge blind spots, doesn’t it? I still often cannot believe that people who are proud of their critical thinking skills can make all the mistakes they chide others for and not see that they do it. And of course it always raises self-doubts “What if I am as blind and the others are actually right”, at least for me. I’m constantly questioning my arguments since I have started reading on this topic, and the permanent feeling of “what if I’m wrong” and of being gaslit is somewhat stressing (and causes the need for taking some online breaks).
So every morning when I click on this blog, the feeling is a relieved one of “Now entering a zone of sanity”. Thanks a lot for that.
Yes it does.
I think there’s a spectrum (so to speak) of possibilities for being wrong on this issue – I think it’s possible that there is a more solid basis for the idea of being trans than I (for one) currently think. I don’t think it’s possible that all the absurd loony claims are actually true.
Oh and you’re welcome! Thank you for adding to the sanity! (If we’re right that it is sanity of course…)
*Blushes*
I think that there are indeed (few) people suffering from gender dysphoria and that they are better off with medical treatment. And these will be the ones that will suffer the most if the whole gender ideology with rapists in women’s prisons etc. comes crashing down one day – which it hopefully will. (And the LGB community will suffer collateral damage from the forced teaming.)
This has been a good conversation and the bit from comments 12-21 have certainly jibed with me. I totally got the Schrödinger’s rapist consent, hell, I’ve been able to observe through the look of fear and actions of a woman that she was concerned about my presence on the same stretch of dark and otherwise deserted street. The utter abandonment or compartmentalisation of the concept by so many of its staunchest proponents was bewildering.
I love the feeling that this blog is a space of mostly sanity and that there are so many commentators here who are smarter, more informed, and more eloquent than I am. It’s well worth the price of an ice cream once a month ;-)
I think the “armed guards” remark is based on a misrepresentation of something KJK said: