Pseudo all the way down
Oh dear, I found him – the “transphilogyny” guy. It’s a sort of TED talk but not really. His name is Pella Felton.
Here’s all 16 minutes 46 seconds.
Here’s his pseudo-intellectual drivel in writing, with a couple of paragraph breaks added:
Transphilogyny refers to the affirmation and normalization of transfemininity as womanhood. Coined as an analogue to trans scholar Julie Serrano’s transmisogyny, I devised transphilogyny as a counter to the rise in structural, political and physical violence towards trans women . Rather than looking at such violence as inevitable, I envision transphilogyny as a collection of utopian practices through which we can imagine and enact a different reality through which human women become legible and valued beyond the gendered and often racialialized norms.
In this talk, I envision transphilogyny as epistemology, performance, and phenomenon, inviting the audience to imagine what it would feel like to experience transfeminity as womanhood and how that practice could change their reality. Drawing on the research of queer feminist scholars such as mecha Cardenas, Jill Dolan, and Sarah Ahmed, this presentation asks the audience to discover the political potential of trans womanhood as a means of disrupting the cultural algorithms which force us into increasingly narrowing and divisive experiences of our lives, cultures, and bodies.
Pella is an actor, poet, filmmaker, podcaster, and activist Charleston WV. Her research centers on archival sound performances as cultural phenomena and the world-building potential of digital audio in creating “utopian vibrations” or extensions of performance which reshape our cultural experiences of identity, space and time. Pella has presented her research at the Pacific Ancient Modern Language Association and Great Lake Sound Studies Association. In addition to research Pella also has over 20 years of performance experience as an actor, comedian, poet, and sometimes theologian. Pella is pursuing her PhD In the Department of Theatre and Film at BGSU. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.
In short it’s not actually a TED talk, it just identifies as a TED talk.
TEDx talks can be organized by anyone who obtains a free license from TED and agree to abide by certain principles. Speakers are not paid, and copyright of the materials is held by TED, which can edit and distribute. There is no curation of speakers or topics by TED. I recall that there have been at least a few instances of people incorrectly claiming, for the apparent purpose of credential-burnishing, to have given TED talks, when in fact they gave TEDx talks. (In fact, I watched a delightful talk earlier today that I thought must surely be TEDx talk, but it was an honest-to-goodness TED talk.) There are some wonderful TEDx talks, to be sure, it’s a great outreach program, but the confusion is irritating.
Oh I missed the x. So it’s even more not really a TED talk.
In short, no credentials in relevant fields, such as Biology.
When I was in my playwriting program, I heard other ‘research’ papers into similarly obtuse and obfuscatory topics. Mish mash presented as legitimate research, using methods that are not really well explicated, because they aren’t really methods. It was bad enough when philosophy started trying to talk like science (why I never understood; they have their own perfectly useful language to work with). It was worse when the various ‘studies’ departments started trying to talk like scientists. Now we have theatre and literary studies trying to talk like scientists.
The big difference is that the language of science has some explicable meaning, and if you ask, most scientists can explain it to you (not physicists; they don’t seem very good at turning technical talk into people talk). When you ask one of these ‘studies’ people, when you say ‘huh?’ all you’re going to get is more word salad. I suspect even they know at some level their words don’t mean anything, and especially not when mashed together the way they do, but they can’t admit it.
It almost sounds like there might be something in it that has meaning; the idea of performance shaping our cultural experiences has some merit; too bad he can’t carve out a real thesis topic from the mumbo-jumbo. Seriously, utopian vibrations? Sounds very Edgar Cayce to me.
Look at the lumping together of all of these supposed forms of “violence,” only one of which is actual violence. Given that you probably include calling you male, or women pushing back against trans demands, as part of those other forms of “violence,” and since we know that physical violence against TiMs is extremely rare, you’ll have to excuse me if I fail to agree with your assessment that violence is in fact “rising.”
You’ll also have to forgive me if I decline to subscribe to your “utopian practices,” as women subjected to male invasion of their spaces are living through an Orwellian nightmare. Expanding on this current hellish reality is a really shitty idea.
I’ve seen enough of you’re “different reality” to know I won’t like it, and I’m not even a women.
YNNB: physical violence against TIMs is extremely rare, and a lot of that is carried out by…other TIMs.