Let’s you not talk
Now let’s read the response:
Dear Drs. Ramona Pérez and Monica Heller,
Open Letter: RE: 2023 AAA/CASCA Annual Meeting Cancellation
We are disappointed that the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and the Canadian
Anthropology Society (CASCA) have chosen to forbid scholarly dialogue at the important joint
conference, themed “Transitions”, to be held in Toronto in November. Our panel, “Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby: Why biological sex remains a necessary analytic category in anthropology”, was accepted on July 13th, 2023 after the submission “was reviewed by the AAA’s Section Program Chairs or by CASCA’s Scientific Committee/Comité Scientifique de la CASCA”. From the time of this acceptance until we received your letter dated September 25th, 2023, no one from the AAA or CASCA reached out to any of the panelists with concerns. Thus, it comes as a shock to all of us that the AAA and CASCA canceled the panel due to the false accusation that “the ideas were advanced in such a way as to cause harm to members represented by the Trans and LGBTQI of the anthropological community as well as the community at large.”
Just like that? No discussions, no negotiations, just BANG, you’re cancelled, more than two months after being accepted? It seems remarkably rude, even apart from the substance. And then that accusation…
Due to the serious nature of the allegation, we hope that, rather than maintaining
secrecy, the AAA and CASCA will share with us and its membership documentation about the exact sources and nature of these complaints and the correspondence that led to this decision.We are puzzled at the AAA / CASCA adopting as its own official stance that to support the continued use of biological sex categories (e.g., male and female; man and woman) is to imperil the safety of the LGBTQI community. Our panel description, written by Kathleen Lowrey, acknowledges that not all anthropologists need to differentiate between sex and gender. One of the abstracts explicitly expresses concerns that ignoring the distinction between sex and gender identity may cause harm to people in the LGBTQI community. In “No bones about it: skeletons are binary; people may not be”, Elizabeth Weiss wrote: “In forensics, however, anthropologists should be (and are) working on ways to ensure that skeletal finds are identified by both biological sex and their gender identity, which is essential due to the
current rise in transitioning individuals.”
I don’t understand that last sentence. How can they possibly ensure that skeletal finds are identified by “gender identity”? I get that there can be and have been finds of skeletons with tools or clothes or the like that don’t “match” their anatomies, but (as has been pointed out) that doesn’t necessarily indicate gender bending, although it might. Gender identity isn’t the kind of thing it’s possible to “ensure” accurately identifying.
Kathleen Lowrey was key in bringing the panel together and in defining our unifying theme. Our panel included a group of diverse women, one of whom is a lesbian. In addition to having three fields of anthropology presented in our panel, our panel also included anthropologists from four countries with three languages – an international panel concerned about the erasure of women.
Ah well there you go then. That’s not allowed. Sorry it took more than two months to notice, but that’s how the halberd crumbles.
To be continued
In one of my many books on forensic anthropology (one of my hobbies…) there’s a story about a skeletonized body found in a fireplace chimney — the individual had been wearing female clothing, but the anthropologists determined that it was definitely a male. Thus, in narrowing down the identity of the deceased, his gender identity was an important detail.
Considering that this was quite possibly a homicide — a transvestite prostitute whose customer reacted badly when he was found out — the victim’s gender identity would have had a bearing on reconstructing the crime and identifying the perpetrator as well.
Sure, and that’s what I meant. It’s just the “ensure” part that I question. There could be evidence of gender that doesn’t match sex that anthropologists don’t recognize because they don’t have enough information. I dunno, maybe the idea was just ensuring they’ll keep it in mind or similar.
In some cases, it seems likely that keeping gender identity in mind could result in wrong conclusions. For a long time, anthropologists, like everyone else, have made a lot of assumptions about sex roles, so finding women buried in graves with spears or other weaponry led to convoluted justifications. It’s possible an individual who appears to be doing what the other sex does might be data points to suggest that reading 1950s western culture back into the past is simply an error. It could be that sex roles were less fixed than they have been in our more recent past.
I don’t know about the one Peter N is talking about; that might be more recent, in which case the conclusion could be more justified.
That kinda puts the lie to this claim from the notice of cancellation (previous post), doesn’t it?
Or was the latter quote perhaps referring to disagreements from saner AAA & CASCA committee members?
On a side note, in the previous post Ophelia had a justified rant about ‘going forward’; may I add my dislike for ‘reached out’ taking the place of the perfectly adequate ‘contacted’?
Yes you may, and I hate that one too. It’s so unctuous. I hate unction.
a group of diverse women
Shouldn’t that be a diverse group of women?
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