The sheer gall!

[Niminy]

Came across this by accident on a well-known TIM’s public Facebook page.

”we must be victims! Everyone is horrid to us!’

The absolute gall of it. That is all.

Trans philosophers?

So people who have suddenly decided that they are really philosophers?

Are they going for Diogenes or Rousseau?

I'm too stupid for this thread I don't understand at all

Good grief.

@Tontostitis Don't worry, you can just pretend that you're very clever and everyone else will be forced to agree with you.

Sorry, I thought most people on this board would remember the philosopher Kathleen Stock, who actually was cancelled, unlike this person, who is still firmly in his job teaching philosophy at a UK university.

Does he mean philosophers who talk about trans or trans philosophers like himself? Bit odd wanting to cancel yourself but if that’s his thing I’ll go with it.

Not only was she cancelled, she had to run the gauntlet of a baying mob of masked students screaming in her face every day she went into work.

I think the problem is that they are confusing their job (Teaching philosophy) with their adopted identity 'trans'.

It's hard to understand which of those parts they think people should be listening to - or do they feel that one part enhances the other?

Translation: my career stalled, I tried getting public profile by positioning myself as a trans spokesperson, and now people keep asking me for a trans perspective on things. It's bias I say, bias!

Is it McKinnon / Ivy? Because I thought they were unhirable because of their poor teaching standards?

'Trans' philosopher, who knew there was such a thing. 😕

No, it’s not. It’s definitely someone who’s known as a trans woman philosopher. Someone who’s been platformed at a major literary festival.

I think the thing that got me about this was the hypocrisy. It’s perfectly fine for Kathleen Stock to be hounded out of her job, for other academics to be treated no-platformed and treated appallingly for expressing gender critical views - but trans people must be centred the whole time.

Yes, it does read like a verbose version of a teenage 'Snot faaaaiiirrrr!', doesn't it?

The irony being that trans extremists are renowned for their emotional incontinence. Incapable of using the basic skills adults require to function in the world, instead using intimidation, threats and bullying to enforce their narrow demands on the rest of society. For evidence see outside any gathering of women where they display sexually / physically abusive placards, screams and chants - alongside occasional torrents of piss and man boob displays.

Followed by: "About a year ago I was invited to give a talk in a church in Fife. The Fife TERFs made a huge fuss. They complained to the council, to the local church, to the diocese, to the residents' association, whatever. All of this is just a way of making it psychologically harder to invite trans people to give talks. [...] It didn't work"

Gosh, yes. Leaving aside any evidence that this actually happened as described, just imagine if this sort of thing actually worked and academics were actually successfully deplatformed on this issue...🤔

...

I don't have a great imagination, so it's fortunate I can side step the mental exercise by just Googling Kathleen Stock, Selina Todd, Laura Tanner, Laura Lecuona Gonzalez, Kathleen Lowrey, Jessica Miranda, Jo Phoenix...

I do remember and I had a friend way back at the start of all this who lectured at Sussex Uni who freely and openly admitted to encouraging the bullying of Kathleen Stock. That's how I lost/ended a 30 year friendship and came out as a Terf. We've come so very far now Id love to have a conversation with her now and see if her views have changed but me repeatedly stating transwomen are men and should not be in women's spaces, sports or awards was apparently very triggering. I can't imagine that conversation would even happen now let alone be so fiery at the time we were both utterly shocked at the other ones views. I clearly remember her and two other women telling me I should be ashamed of myself whilst the final member of our group sat in horrified silence. I went home and cried it was so upsetting.

That sounds awful, poor you. My sympathies.

Years of this sort of thing have had a profound effect on how I see people, both individually and on a general level. The sheer scale of bovine vacuity it exposed in particular circles was something of a shock to me.

I've had fairly few personal dust-ups on the basis of living by several clichés - (1) you can't argue with stupid; (2) none so blind as them as won't see; and (3) you can't make someone understand something when their paycheck relies on them not understanding it.

I have, however, been caught off-guard once by someone radically changing their previous approach due to a family member suddenly adopting a trans identity and (from my perspective) she herself becoming afraid of losing her extended support system by maintaining her views. We had previously dissected this whole thing at some length from the same perspective so it was extremely awkward (arguably more for her than for me). We've barely spoken since, which is sad.

Being correct and upholding basic logic and safeguarding can be (to borrow from Helen Joyce) a standing reproach to some people, and a surprisingly lonely place to be.

You're not alone, though.

It’s very painful. I too have - or had - a friend who lectures at Sussex. In fact this no-longer friend introduced me to my husband and was a witness at our wedding. She ended our friendship because I spoke in support of Kathleen Stock. Virtually everyone I know in academia is totally in thrall to GI.

So, the "trans philosophers" thing...

Linguistics professor John McWhorter, an African-American man, has a thought experiment where he says - name some black public intellectuals in modern America who are known for talking about things other than race. Basically it's Thomas Sowell (economics), Neil DeGrasse Tyson (astrophysics) and McWhorter himself (linguistics), and then people really start to struggle. Caveats here are that Sowell is 95 years old, and both Sowell and McWhorter are famous at least in part because they dissent from conventional narratives on American racial politics.

There's a point here about a university system that directs young black thinkers into the ghetto of Black Studies, or becoming the "black voice" in other fields, rather than just letting them distinguish themselves in diverse fields.

So:

• Complaining that black academics frequently speak on topics other than race really misses the point about what happens with black academics;
• Trans academics, in my experience, cannot stop talking about being trans, and are often prone to thinking that their personal lives are of intense interest to everyone else.

I once met the late Rachel Pollack, who was a prolific author of science fiction and fantasy, one of the world's leading experts on tarot, and also a professor of creative writing. Quite a bit of Rachel's fictional writing was informed by his trans identity, just as much as his Jewish upbringing. But when meeting Rachel, after about a minute or two, you almost forgot Rachel was trans, not because he passed as female - you'd instantly clock him as trans - but because he was such an interesting person with so much to say on such a variety of subjects.

If any trans academic reads this - be more like Rachel Pollack! Have interesting things to say about lots of subjects! If you're just ruminating about your personal feelings, your academic work will be about as interesting to the rest of the world as those John Lennon albums that we pretend don't exist because he's making the false assumption that the minutiae of his relationship with Yoko are of interest to anyone but him and Yoko.

If you don't do that, don't complain about being platformed as a token, because you're making yourself a token.

And don't complain about lacking a platform if you've supported women being cancelled by your community.

Is it someone who identifies as a philosopher?

@Tontostitis and @Niminy I’m so sorry for your experiences

There's a point here about a university system that directs young black thinkers into the ghetto of Black Studies, or becoming the "black voice" in other fields, rather than just letting them distinguish themselves in diverse fields.

I wonder if the same thing could be said about young women being directed into gender studies.

Further translation: No-one invites me to give talks because my work is dire

When I do inveigle my way in to give a seminar no-one attends because my work is dire

If this is who I think it is, he is very much like this in person.

I first came across him a while ago now, at a university seminar the topic of which I was interested in at the time. I didn't know who he was, this strange bloke preening himself and wearing a flouncy skirt (one of my pre-school granddaughters had a similar skirt and wore it to parties, I recall). He was all "Me, me, me! Look at me! Listen to me!" and expected everyone to be familiar with his work - which very few if any attendees were, as far as I could tell.

Overall, I remember feeling this was a sad, disturbed sort of man. Very unlikeable but no real harm as he appeared just weird. Later his notoriety as a militant trans-identified professor was explained to me. I do feel sorry for his students and colleagues.

Really interesting.
I am familiar with Rachel's work on the tarot - she was a very prominent author on the subject back in the 80s New Age scene.
I had no idea she was actually a 'he', a transwoman. Because way back then, it really was not an issue. It wasn't even a thing mentioned in polite society.

I cannot imagine now a prominent author, an expert in their field, being trans and this not being continually remarked upon. Their entire output would be read in the light of their trans identity.
I can't think of any examples - any suggestions of modern experts who happen to be trans but the trans is not ever remarked on and does not overshadow their status as an expert in their field?

This is not a good direction of travel for trans people.

Deirdre McCloskey in economics, I suppose, and... that's about it. It's hard to think of anyone else who's prominent in a field and just happens to be trans, and it's not front and centre all the time.

I have kind of a love/hate relationship with Gore Vidal, but I always liked how he resisted being pigeonholed as a "gay novelist", because he felt that made him seem like a writer with one subject. Or the comic book writer Christopher Priest, who at one point took a break because he was fed up with just being given black characters to write, as if a black writer couldn't have perfectly good ideas for Spider-Man. (Marvel in particular have a habit of hiring black writers and confining them to the ghetto of writing Black Panther, a character created by two Jewish men in the 1960s.)