This kind of flagrant disregard for our community
Here we go again.
Brian Leiter points out an item:
Wollongong Undergraduate Students’ Association… (UPDATED)
…is a disgrace. How can the Australasian Association of Philosophy permit such an event? (And if the AAP isn’t hosting this event, why are they permitting the use of the AAP logo?)
What’s it done?
Scheduled an event for a conference on Monday with the thoughtful title “F**k off Holly Lawford-Smith”.
Under “Details” we get:
A well known TERF has been invited to speak at the Australasian Association of Philosophers conference at UoW. She has been overtly transphobic and is a huge supporter of the fake academic theories created by so called “gender critical” academics who use outdated terminology and ideas such as Blanchard’s theory on gender to discriminate against some of the most marginalised people in our society.
This is disgusting, this is unacceptable and this is coming from a university who supposedly supports queer students while allowing hate speech to be propogated on campus.
We at the Allsorts Queer Collective and the Wollongong Undergraduate Student Association find it outrageous that the university and AAP has allowed an explicit TERF to give a talk about exclusionary rights within women’s spaces.
She is not welcome to spew her disgusting discriminatory and exclusionary hate speech at our university. We must stand against this and send not only a message to Holly Lawford-Smith but to UoW that we will not stand for this kind of flagrant disregard for our community at our uni.
Four legs good, two legs bad. Washington’s army took over the airports. It’s all the same thing – mindless yelling, refusal to think, refusal to learn, pig-headed belligerence, brainless tribalism. It has no business in government and it has no business in universities.
Brian did a follow-up post.
I characterized the AAP response as “tepid,” but philosopher John Schwenkler (Florida State) wrote me with a more critical take, which he kindly gave permission to share:
It is not “tepid” — rather it’s effectively a slander of our colleague. The first paragraph begins by indicating that she wasn’t important enough to have been invited by the society, and ends by implying that her positions “conflict with [the AAP’s] commitment to support diversity in philosophy”. And then in the second paragraph there’s a clear suggestion that allowing someone like Holly to speak freely “conflict[s] with the aim of creating a space where everyone is able to participate”. Both of the latter claims are ludicrous.
I’m glad I don’t have to go to university with those “students.”
It’s funny how an effort to allow everyone to speak freely means you have to shut up most people.
With this over the top, enflamed hyperbole, you’d think it was a war criminal or some sort of death squad coming to campus, not a lone academic. Of course, as far as the woke are concerned, it is. The language succeeds brilliantly as self parody, and would indeed be hilarious but for the fact that this sort of rhetoric would be used to justify a violent response as an act of “self defence” by the trans community. It’s pretty telling of the movement itself that they react so extremely to someone armed with nothing but the power of critical thought. Not the might of the state, not weapons, not mobilized street mobs, just words and ideas.
To be honest, I can see their concern. It only takes one voice to declare the emporor’s nuditude to bring the parade to a halt, or at least get more people to look more closely. A thoughtful, reasonable opponent is the worst kind to have if you’re selling bullshit. They can’t afford to let people hear her speak because the simplicity and clarity of “Men are not women”, “A woman is an adult human female” and “Lesbians don’t have penises” is like sunlight to vampires. No sunlight allowed! Trans activism seems to be held together by little more than the fervour, volume and sheer repetition (TWAW! TERF!! TRANSPHOBE!!!) of its rhetoric and the collective, reflexive rage of the twittersphere. God knows it isn’t held together by anything resembling coherent thought (e.g. Riley Black’s claim to be both “trans” and “nonbinary” at the same time). I wonder how many of this crew have even read anything by
the witchDr. Lawford-Smith? How many are simply answer the call to arms, no questions asked, their’s not to reason why (though, if you’re in the philosophy department, reasoning is kinda part of the job description…).Had to laugh at this:
Do they go about wearing outfits featuring black and white stripes? The name brings to mind nothing quite so much as licorice.
Now I want some.
Damn, YNNB?! I wish I could buy you a drink for that comment! Simply marvelous.
I’ve noticed that Blanchard is a recurring hate figure to this tribe. I was curious a while ago and read a bit about his research into transexualism. I don’t know if his theories/findings are right or wrong but they are explanatory, and i can see why they strike a nerve.
As i understand it Blanchard’s basic finding was that gender dysphoria comes as a result of either being gay and wanting to attract the same sex, or being a man who, to put it bluntly, is turned on by imagining being a woman. In my opinion there’s nothing particularly wrong with that if that is what’s going on. As i say, i don’t if it is. And i may be oversimplifying Blanchard’s views.
But I think the idea, that being trans could be to do with sexuality, probably contradicts the self-image of some trans people. Perhaps they think sexuality is base whereas ‘gender identity’ is more serious, or something. So when people like Blanchard suggest that their situation may be to do with their libido, perhaps they are shocked and appalled and seek to silence such people immediately with no debate whatsoever.
On the other hand, I’ve seen some people engage in the gaslighting of gender critical feminists, accusing them of being “fetishists” because they believe that sex characteristics are actually relevant to whether you are male or female. A form of projection maybe?
Ben McGorrigan, #4:
It’s baser than that. For pointing out that men and women have different sex characteristics, or that most people are very particular about the contents of their sexual partners’ underwear, we are told that we have an unhealthy obsession with genitals.
As a basic rule of thumb, there’s usually a very good reason why one’s arguments are met not wiith counter-arguments but with insults.
YNNB
That’s the first thing that came to my mind when I saw that comment. I had to go grab one from the kitchen. And no, I will not share my licorice with you!
What the autogynephilia explanation and similar explanations do is cast doubt on the sacred belief in Gender Identity, which has metastasized to mean that sex is nothing while gender is everything, and gender is the equivalent of soul. The body is mere dross, while the soul is ALL. If your soul is female then you’re female, end of, so if you have a penis that’s a female penis.
It’s a form of spirituality, in short, and body-based explanations are anathema because SPIRIT IS ALL.
How ironic it is that so many atheists are on the bandwagon.
I have come to believe that transactivism is a parasite infecting Higher Ed, Civil Rights activism and that thing I can only describe as compassionate counter culturalism.
I fear the infection may be lethal.
The AAP Statement attracted comments including this letter that I transcribed from a JPG file so I can post it here for the record:
So the UNSW Philosophy Society says “transgender women are women” (TWAW), “transgender men are men” (TMAM), “transformative sex change is possible” (whatever “sex” means), and “‘gender identity’ should have a bearing on a person’s sex-based rights” (whatever “sex” means again).
Thanks Dave!
That letter is disturbing, because it’s less fatuously written than such things usually are, but it’s no less bullshit, and bullying bullshit at that. They “question the decision” to “provide Professor Lawford-Smith with a platform” – as if she were going to espouse genocide.
I see the replies start with a resounding (in a good way) comment by Russell Blackford. We’ve disagreed about a lot of things in recent years but not on this one.
“What is being done to Dr Lawford-Smith should be utterly anathema to us all. It is a fundamental attack on free inquiry and on the norms of the discipline of philosophy.”
And on a person.
Well that’s sinister. A call to arms, almost.
So “excluding” is always bad, then?
I wonder if any Australian universities have student clubs or organizations exclusively for Asian students or Aborigine students. Their membership would be “exclusive” and “discriminatory” with regards to race and ethnicity. Muslim student groups? Same exclusion based on religion. Would they condemn that? Probably not, as these groups, rightly, should have their own spaces apart from predominantly white, and/or Christian Australian culture.
That’s just it, isn’t it. Maybe they’ve decided that these are settled questions, but it’s clear that they are not. Just because they’ve reached a conclusion without going through an argument doesn’t mean we have to follow suit, or take their word on it that these claims are in fact true.
Part of Lawford-Smith’s crime is probably the fact that she is centering the concerns of women and girls. The horror! That is the problem with those GC types going on and on about women type women instead of men type women. By treating the concerns of and for women and girls (of which, I might add, there are a metric fuckton more of than there are trans women) as an anti-trans movement (rather than a pro-woman one), woketivists get to reframe it and recenter it on trans demands rather than women’s rights. In fact it’s this “minority” status that is being deployed as a weapon in this discussion, or rather diatribe, as discussions usually involve dialogue between parties rather than one party yelling STFU at the other.
Women have “experienced extreme forms of discrimination” because of their sex for MILLENIA. The demands of trans identified men to enter women-only spaces CONTINUES this “systematic pattern of discrimination.” This, the expectation and demand that women should surrender the safety and security of women-only spaces, more than anything, is confirmation of TIM’s basic, male socialization. Allowing TIMs into women-only spaces make women’s boundaries and safety much harder to protect and enforce. Some women, precisely because of female socialization, will feel less inclined to speak out, question or “raise a fuss” at the appearance of obviously male-bodied individuals showing up in change rooms and showers. Even if no “real” trans women ever assault women in women only spaces, the fact that men masquerading as trans women (and with many, many trans women, who couldn’t pass if their lives depended on it, the difference between “real” trans women and men “masquerading” as trans women will be impossible for anyone to distinguish) take advantage of such a loophole, particularly under regimes that allow self ID. If trans activists refuse to openly and honestly aknowledge these legitimate concerns, then it’s vital that Lawford-Smith and others continue to raise them. Bushing off things that have already happened as not happening, or wildly improbable, or transphobic scare-mongering, just shows the bad faith in which they continue to act (I won’t say “argue” or “debate”, becauae they’re not doing either of those things at all.)
Pretty rich, given that they haven’t likely given much though to “the social and political consequences embedded” within their own ideas, particularly as they effect women and girls, who make up more than half the human population of the planet. Wee bit of an oversight, that. If they’re anything like other trans activists, I’ll bet the “highly critical stance” will involve shouting and threats rather than questions and debate. They’re not prepared to listen because they’re afraid they’ll turn to stone or lose their woke cookies or something.
For what it’s worth, I sent this email to the UNSW Philosophy Society at the email address I posted above. I haven’t received a reply, but I feel satisfied that I made it clear, their position does not look like philosophy:
Oh I think that’s worth a lot.