The Institute of Art and Ideas asked philosophers to say a little on How Can Philosophy Help Us Understand Transgender Experiences? Rebecca Kukla is one of the philosophers who said a little. It’s interesting.
Much of my own research is in the philosophy of language. What does this have to do with the lives and experiences of trans folks? I am interested in thinking about the pragmatic effects of speech acts such as calling someone by a name or pronoun – one that they identify with, one they have asked to be called by, or one they have asked not to be called by. Sometimes people act as though verbal disagreements over what name or pronoun to use for someone are simple disagreements over fact, in which people are making competing assertions. In contrast, I think that addressing someone by a name or pronoun is a speech act more complex and with more morally significant effects than merely describing them accurately or inaccurately. Recognizing someone as having a gender or name places them in social space, and helps determine concrete facts about how they will be treated, what expectations will be placed on them, and what they can and cannot do.
(First, an aside – “folks” again? Really? Must we? It’s so annoying.)
Surprise ending: I agree with her. I agree that addressing someone by a name or pronoun is a speech act more complex and with more morally significant effects than merely describing them accurately or inaccurately. I think she’s quite right that using a particular name or pronoun places people in social space and helps determine concrete facts about how they will be treated, what expectations will be placed on them, and what they can and cannot do. That’s exactly why I object to making it mandatory to use fake ones. I think for instance using “she” and “her” and a woman’s name in reference to a trans woman nudges us into thinking of that trans woman as literally a woman. That may be harmless sometimes, but it’s not harmless at all times. When it’s a male rapist in prison? When it’s a man playing cricket against women or a man winning all the cycle competitions or a male wrestler winning gold medals that should have gone to women or male runners ditto? Then I don’t think it’s harmless.
Comments
12 responses to “The pragmatic effects of speech acts”
Yes, using language to place someone as male or female does place them in our expectations, and thus modifies what we might expect of that person… But should it? Should we even have different expectations of a person based on being male or female?
Kukla seems to approve of using the desired gendered language of a trans person so as to place them in society as they desire, even though this arrangement assumes and in fact depends on this structure remaining in place, almost as if, without it, a trans person will be adrift in a nebulous place of not having any gendered expectations placed on them.
But this is a good thing! To disapprove of this is to inadvertently admit that gendered expectations are necessary for the current trans theory.
I am fascinated by Susan Stryker’s musings. *
“naturalized, ossified, stagnant concepts of embodiment and identity” – Old-fashioned ideas about male and female people
“Within biopolitical modernity” – I assume he means, “nowadays”–
“we have inculcated a cultural belief that the body is a stable and unambiguous anchor for both subjective identity and social categorization, and that the linkage between identity and categorization expresses a truth invested in and guaranteed by the material specificity of our biological substance” – We have old-fashioned ideas about male and female people
“This is merely ideology, metaphysically elevated to the status of an ontological given” – (Much like “Trans women are women”–ed.)
(what is “merely ideology”? That “the body is a stable and unambiguous anchor for both subjective identity and social categorization”? But what does this mean, exactly?)
“Because the hegemonic biopolitical regime of which gender is a part implies that we who are trans cannot or should not exist, yet obviously do exist, the false ontological premise becomes a justification for any and all actions taken to insure that we shall not exist” – Some people think males can’t be women, but they’re wrong wrong wrongy wrong WRONG. So now I’m going to pretend that my very existence is threatened. HELP ME PHILOSOPHY! HELP ME!
* By “fascinated,” I mean, “really amazed that this bullshit is taken seriously enough to be quoted anywhere.”
Funny you should say this, as I just came across this peice this morning:
https://fairplayforwomen.com/pronouns/
It’s title is “Pronouns are Rohypnol.” It’s written by Barra Kerr.
This is its conclusion:
Having predetermined that ‘she’ has not been ‘fixed’, what if the obviously disgruntled female athletes on either side in a planned coordinated effort pulled down ‘her’ shorts and jock strap? This is no more indecent than Michelangelo’s David, after all ‘she’ has a great body.
Would this shock tactic give pause to other trans women before stepping onto the podium? Before playing on a women’s team? Would this exposure undeniably reveal the incongruity?
Enough talk, speech acts. How about a league for trans women. A league for trans men. Sounds inclusive to me.
#2 Lady Mondegreen
That passage reminds me of Jordan Peterson’s blathering.
Pantsing one of them is not likely to have the desired effect.
Lady M, you missed out my favourite – all those big wordy-words, and yet they seem unaware of the difference between “insure” and “ensure” .
YNnB, yes, I read that one the other day. Almost posted about it but decided it would be all yes, yes to that, yes again, so didn’t.
A few points about pronouns from a linguistic perspective:
–As with all grammaticized aspects of language, pronouns essentially provide pre-packaged bits of information that have become relevant for the speakers of the language over the generations. If we had to agonize over every word choice, communication through language would be a much more arduous process (it took me a few minutes to compose this sentence; fortunately I didn’t have to think much about, e.g., verb tense).
–Different languages grammaticize different aspects of reality. Most languages outside of the Indo-European and Semitic families (and even some IE languages, such as Farsi) don’t have sex-based grammatical gender; some, such as Turkish, don’t have any grammatical gender. (Turkish, for example, uses “o” as its one-size-fits-all third-person singular pronoun).
–It’s been shown that languages force their speakers to pay attention to those aspects of reality that they grammaticize. One of the most striking examples is Guugu Yimithirr, which uses geographic directions to indicate relative positions (e.g., instead of saying “Mary is next to/to the right of John” you’d say “Mary is to the north of John”). Speakers of the language have an amazing sense of direction, even when set down in an unfamiliar place with no obvious cues. So a speaker of English is compelled by the mere fact of the pronoun system to try to suss out the sex of anyone we’re dealing with. (Of course in certain situations where the sex is unknown or unimportant, we can use “they” or “it”.) That doesn’t mean that speakers of languages that don’t grammaticize those aspects can’t be made aware of them–Turkish speakers can certainly distinguish between males and females–but rather that we cannot help but notice, usually unconsciously, those aspects that our language grammaticizes.
So focusing so much on the use of pronouns makes salient and uncertain an aspect of English that for most speakers is usually automatic; in doing so, it can have the effect of impeding communication. That’s not necessarily an argument against paying attention to pronouns, but it’s something to keep in mind.
@What a Maroon
That’s interesting, but both Turkey and Iran have a very pronounced view of the difference between men and women, including locking up women in Iran who don’t wear the hijab.
Really the first thing you notice about another human being, unless they have a pronounced unusual feature eg being in a wheelchair or awful deformity, is their sex.
@KBPlayer,
I realize that, but I wasn’t claiming that Turkey or Iran are free of sexism or misogyny, just that their language doesn’t force them to always classify people as men or women unconsciously. Put another way, they don’t have the pronoun wars that rage in the English-speaking world.
To illustrate my point a bit better, consider the Guugu Yimithirr example. Most of us know about compass points, and if we put some effort into it we can usually figure out which way is north. For example, I know that our house faces south, so if we’re inside and you’re standing between me and the front door, I could truthfully say that you’re south of me. But it would sound weird, and it would probably take you a bit longer to parse. But to a native Guugu Yimithirr speaker it would be perfectly unremarkable.
Now imagine that I tell you that in my house, we call north “west”. That would probably seem kind of odd to you, but it wouldn’t have much effect on your speaking. But for a Guugu Yimithirr speaker, it would totally mess them up, and they’d probably either rebel against the notion or be entirely confused when trying to speak.
That is what happens with the pronoun wars. (I can imagine it’s even worse in languages where grammatical gender is expressed not just in pronouns, but also in adjectives and articles. But maybe they don’t have those kinds of wars.)
This “folks” nonsense is an incredibly annoying affectation.