A conference takes shape.
Let’s read it.
The first UK Workshop in Trans Philosophy will take place over two days on 24th and 25th March. Whilst nominally based at the University of Glasgow, the workshop will take place online.
Trans philosophy – philosophy that speaks to the experiences of, politics, and cultural production of transgender people – is one of the fastest-growing fields in contemporary philosophy. In addition to hallmark papers such as Kapusta (2016), Bettcher (2013, 2019), and Dembroff & Wodak (2018), last year saw the publication of the ground-breaking volume of trans political theory and philosophy Transgender Marxism (Gleeson and O’Rourke 2020). Beyond the realm of published work, a new generation of PhD and early career trans philosophers is beginning to produce exciting new thought.
Trans philosophy identifies as philosophy but is actually wankery.
This rapid growth has come against a difficult political background, especially in the UK. Transgender people have become the political football du jour in the UK, facing what Meg John Barker (2017) has called a “moral panic” that has only intensified in the past three years.
Hilarious that they think they have to name someone as the source for the familiar phrase “moral panic.” It’s like giving a citation for “pain in the ass” or “pile of sick.”
Anyway I’m sure it will be very trans scholarly and trans fascinating.
Comments
13 responses to “The football du jour”
And there you have, stated in black and white, that gender is created by culture. Not innate. Not something you always “knew” about yourself. Not about your feelings. But created by and within certain cultures. Probably why Afghanistan isn’t overrun by Talibs in woman face.
“Rainy fascism island” – professional philosophers, or highschoolers on twitter?
Universities just need to start winding Philosophy programs down. The discipline is broken.
Transgender Marxism… If that isn’t an oxymoron I dunno what is.
Don’t know much about philosophy, but for Polish Americans (and maybe Poles generally) “Kapusta” is kielbasa cooked and served with sauerkraut.
Pardon the digression.
“In the following paper we will be discussing the need to believe what people tell us to be true about themselves, explaining why believing trans people are what they say they are is like believing gay people, rape victims, and those with blinding insights that suddenly explain, like, everything so that it all finally makes sense, and not at all like believing anorexics, psychics, and alien abductees. We will also discuss the unknowable, shifting nature of sex, contrasting it with the precisely defined certainties of gender identity.”
I know. Too clearly written.
Reminds me of what Marx said about Napoleon III: history repeats itself, the first time through as tragedy, the second as farce. It also brings to mind that lead character in The Rocky Horror Show. Dr Frank-N-Furter, who loudly proclaimed: “I’m a trans-sexual transvestite from Transylvania..!”
But that was intended to scare the bejasus out of nobody, and in that it succeeded mightily for me. As a six-year-old, I had been put throughHouse of Dracula at our local Picture Show’s Saturday kids’ matinee, there followed by Boris Karloff playing Frankenstein’s monster. So, I was set up for life. When I read about trans-philosophers trying to corrupt the youth and the universities at which they they study, I am overwhelmed by the pathos of it all.
My most vivid memory of undergraduate philosophy was a lecturer proposing a reason as to why studying philosophy may have some value: “one day you may have to defend yourself against some philosophers…”
I had read this not as “the creation of transness via culture” but as “the cultural products created by trans people.”
Fair enough but the only cultural products created by trans people are trans people.
Perhaps you’re forgetting misogynistic tweets.
Roj Blake@#10
Au contraire, my friend! Even as we type, trans cultural products are on display at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.
Jo Bartosch reviews the show here.
Holms @ #2:
Why can’t it be both?
Or both, but only on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays?