Under the banner
Oh good, an academic article on “Philosophical Problems With the Gender-Critical Feminist Argument Against Trans Inclusion.” At least it won’t be stuffed full of shouty accusations and libels.
But…
The proposed reforms aim to replace the current medicalized process of gender recognition with one based on self-identification and self-declaration. The most prominent voice opposing the reforms was raised under the banner of gender-critical feminism. Academics from various disciplines, including philosophy and law, have lent their voices to the gender-critical project. In general, gender-critical feminism advocates reserving women’s spaces for cis women.
That’s in the first paragraph, and already I’m de-motivated to keep going, because already we’re in a world of assumptions that I refuse to assume, that I in fact reject entirely. Gender-critical feminism advocates reserving women’s spaces for women, which is the whole point of “women’s spaces” in the first place. I refuse to be called a “cis woman,” I refuse to call women “cis women,” I don’t agree that “trans women” are just another set of women, like French women and Kenyan women, tall women and short women, poor women and rich women. The academic philosopher who wrote this piece takes the opposite view so he will be wording everything in that taking it for granted way…so what’s the point in reading more?
Others have been more willing to take the trouble than I am.
My college philosophy professors would have taken me to task for being (a) sloppy, (b) uncharitable, and (c) begging the question had I, as an opponent of the gender-critical view, written this sentence:
Sloppy, because it doesn’t accurately represent the view in question. Uncharitable, as it’s not representing the best (i.e., strongest & most-likely) interpretation of the view. Question begging, as it assumes the validity and +soundness of my own view; i.e., that cis women is a meaningful term.
Maybe I lucked out with respect to the teachers from whom I had the pleasure to learn. Maybe the vast majority of philosophy profs are terrible at their job. That’s rather tragic, if true, given the role philosophy nominally plays in the academy as a whole.
Nullius, my Philosophy profs would have done the same, and I wasn’t even a Philosophy major. They expected better from their undergrads, non-majors students than such poor thinking.
My Biology profs would have failed me if I had presumed to think that reality could be changed just by wishing it, and by claiming that it was something other than what the evidence demonstrated it to be at such a high level of probability that the odds of it being otherwise were effectively zero (though in science, we never quite reach that total certainty that so many people claim – that claim is a sign of dogma, not science, hence PZ Myers is not doing science when he claims the science supports gender ideology. He is doing dogma).
And even probability-zero isn’t a certainty, after all. Darts do hit dartboards.