Not immediately obvious
A post on the Cambridge University Press blog is so bad it appears to have been written by two children, but in fact the named authors are academics. It honestly strains belief.
First paragraph:
Kathleen Stock identifies as a philosopher of (expert on) sex and gender identity partly on the grounds that she has spent years (let us take her word for it) thinking, researching, and building careful and comprehensive arguments about these issues.
“expert on” is not a synonym for “philosopher of.” The two are not the same thing.
“let us take her word for it” is sheer childish sneering.
She also says, ‘it’s not hate speech to say males can’t be women’. But this claim is not obviously correct. Nor is it immediately obvious that she is qualified to make it.
That’s just ludicrous. Do they interrupt everyone who says something to shout “that’s not obviously correct!!”? It doesn’t need to be “obviously correct” all by itself, on account of how it’s not the sum total of what she has to say. What an absolutely dumb thick dim stupid interruption. And it’s not immediately obvious that these two are qualified to go outside without adult supervision.
I believe Stock fails to take seriously the possibility that misgendering and gender denialism are forms of hate speech partly because she is not an expert on hate speech but also partly because (and this is more understandable) she wants to assert her right to free speech and her vital interest in not being ‘cancelled’. In her case, being cancelled at her former University and at several public speaking events has been (she has said) not merely confronting but professionally damaging and extremely traumatic and scary at times.
One, why “I” when the piece is signed by two authors, Alexander Brown and Adriana Sinclair? It’s “I” throughout but there are two authors. I suppose they identify as “I”?
Two, she wasn’t “cancelled at her former University”: she left, because the students upped the bullying to the point that she didn’t want to be around them anymore.
I have extensively researched the idea of hate speech, in both its ordinary and legal senses, and have concluded that misgendering and gender denialism are importantly similar to hate speech, and on the balance of probabilities are, in certain instances and contexts, forms of hate speech, at least under the ordinary concept.
…
But in what ways are misgendering and gender denialism similar to paradigmatic examples of hate speech? Take three illustrations. First, miscategorising a trans woman as just a man is similar in style to miscategorising a bisexual man as just a closet homosexual.
Sneaky. “Style” is not the issue. You could say that about anything. “X is not Y” is similar in style to “A is not B” – what’s your point? The issue is whether it’s true or not. Also, what’s that “just” doing in there? It’s manipulating, that’s what it’s doing. A trans woman isn’t “just” a man, as if being a man is like being a piece of carpet fluff. In the real world it’s more likely for women to be dismissed as “just a” than for men.
Second, saying that trans men are simply confused and troubled women is similar as an act of degradation and belittlement to saying that lesbian women are simply confused and troubled straight women.
No it isn’t. Why? Because the two are different. Same-sex attraction is not an impossibility; being in “the wrong body” is.
Third, denying that trans people are the gender with which they identify can have similarly profound consequences as denying that Igbo Jews are Jews.
??????????
Another illustration of “this ideology makes people stupid.”
“Similarly profound consequences” = they are denied the Promised Land?
Let us take I’s word for it.
Absolutely. They are denied the promised land of women-only spaces, places where they can watch women undress, and also they can intimidate and frighten women.
Given the emphasis on “singular they”, it was only a matter of time before “plural I” came into the picture.
Not only academics, they’re academics in the School of Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication Studies. At Cambridge.
As a friend of mine likes to say, What in the Blue Lord Fuck of Everwhen?
There are plenty of people who “identify as” philosophers, but Kathleen Stock is not one of them, she is the genuine article. Just like there are people who “identify as” being smart enough to know the fkn difference.
I don’t see any arguments in this piece; only a series of unsupported assertions.
Why that’s the same as what I saw.
Given that the “Royal we” makes one as above the rest, it’s possible the authors are marking themselves as prominently plebeian by reducing themselves from many individuals to one?
Or, like that Seinfeld quote, after it is said, of Newman, “there’s more to him than meets the eye”, Seinfeld replies, “oh no, there’s less”.
It doesn’t surprise me at all that these people are academics, I’m afraid, or that their book is published by the Cambridge University Press. The higher infantility has been with us for a long time now and shows no signs of ceasing to grow or diminishing. Nor does the cynical publication of books — books that are intended to appeal to inflamed & dogmatic idiots — by what are supposed to be reputable academic publishers show any signs of diminishing or ceasing.
#5 These are academics at the University of East Anglia, which is at Norwich. It is not to be confused with the University of Cambridge or, for that matter, Anglia Ruskin, which began existence as the Cambridge College of Art and enjoys a decent reputation.
Their book is currently 1,480,489 on Amazon, which probably means it has sold two copies – hardcover £84.30, Kindle £27, paperback £26.96. As it is 610 pages long this represents remarkable value for money. It is 1,480,489 certainly very cheap of the authors to use Kathleen Stock’s name to try and drum up interest in their turgid tome.
Is it bad that a part of me hopes that people like the ones who wrote this article never have the humility to admit that they got it wrong and they have to spend the rest of their lives with pronouns in their bios humouring the delusions of a tiny group of weirdos long after the rest of society has moved on and consigned Transgenderism to the realm of the personal sphere?
More generally, imagine “The Office Skeptic”, the guy (it’s usually a guy, right) who was always fine telling people that astrology/homeopathy/naturopathy/bigfoot/alien abductions etc were bollocks, even if it bothered some of his co workers. The guy who “told it like it was” or who didn’t care to sugar coat the truth. Now imagine that guy falls for transgenderism, and because he has based his identity around being right about things in a non ideological way he can never admit that he fell for something dumber than Creationism and Flat Earthism combined. So he soldiers on, but around him the world changes, and he’s no longer seen as “The Office Skeptic”, now he’s the guy who thinks men can get pregnant and that women can have penises, and his co-workers lump him in with the lady who thinks that Jesus is gonna come back any day now, or the guy who believes the moon landings were faked and that alien abductions are real, or the lady who’s really into crystal healing and spiritualism. He bet his reputation on the wrong horse and now he’s stuck in a social silo with only perverts and mentally people for company…
Is it bad that I feel little sympathy for that guy? Maybe it’s because I knew a few…
Maybe I’m just reading this wrong, but it’ seems strange that these two authors use “identifies as a philosopher” as an insult, which they reiterate in their sarcastic “let us take her word for it” aside regarding her years of research. Both of these snide comments are intended to denigrate Stock, and cast doubt upon her expertise. Given how central the idea of “identifying as” is in gender ideology, and how much we are told to take people’s word about their “identity” claims, it seems odd that they’d be so jeeringly cynical in using these very concepts in their mocking of Stock’s credentials.
I think they’re doing it as a “see how YOU like it” kind of thing.