One of the signers
Lisa Guenther, one of the academic philosophers who signed the letter demanding that Hypatia retract Rebecca Tuvel’s piece, explained her signing a couple of days ago.
[Jesse Singal’s] article, like the post at the Daily Nous, goes through the arguments of Rebecca Tuvel’s article, “In Defense of Transracialism,” to argue that they’re not so bad after all: no outrageous claims, no offensive slurs, nothing but reasonable arguments. But this is precisely the problem: it’s what Charles Mills critiques as “ideal theory,” which attempts (in the words of author Jesse Singal) to “pull up one level from the real world and force people to grapple with principles and claims on their own merits, rather than — in the case of Dolezal — baser instincts like disgust and outrage.”
But ideal theory is not the only alternative to irrational “baser instincts.” What ideal theory abstracts from–and this is the reason why Mills argues that ideal theory is ideology– is the network of power relations that shape particular historical contexts and meanings.
THIS is the fundamental problem with Tuvel’s article, and with all of the defenses I have read so far: It “toy[s] around” (Singal’s words again) with a few arguments about issues that deeply and viscerally affect the lives of people whose social location is radically different from her own, with no evidence in the article of an awareness of the context, power dynamics, or stakes of these issues for trans people and people of color. This is why it should not have been published in Hypatia, and why the demand for a retraction is not simply the irrational whim of an “angry” mob, but a critique of white feminist ideal theory as transphobic and anti-black ideology.
Full disclosure: I know Rebecca Tuvel, I was on her dissertation committee, I don’t think she intended to do harm by writing this article. But intentions do not determine or reduce impact. The point is not to avoid ever saying anything “wrong” or problematic. The point is to commit to accountability — both as actors and as bystanders. This is what all of us are called upon to do in this moment.
She was on her dissertation committee, but still saw fit to join the monstering.
But more basically: what I wonder is why Tuvel is raked over the coals for insufficient awareness of the context, power dynamics, or stakes of these issues for trans people and people of color, with no corresponding chastisement or even mention of awareness of the context, power dynamics, or stakes of these issues for women. What about women? Why are women being told to pay better attention to the stakes of these issues for trans people and people of color while trans people and people of color are not being told to pay better attention to the stakes of these issues for women? Why are trans people and people of color being treated as marginalized or de-privileged while women are treated as hegemonic or privileged? When did we decide that women had left the ranks of the subordinated and joined the ranks of the subordinators? When did we decide that?
Spoiler: I didn’t decide that, and lots of women didn’t decide that. It’s not true. Women are not part of the overlord class. Pasting the word “white” onto feminism doesn’t change that.
That’s not what Tuvel is talking about, but it damn well is what I’m talking about.
Vile, dishonest, incoherent, morally and intellectually bankrupt. This is religious mania. This is not “feminism”. This is a witch burning, and the women doing it are fairly salivating with glee.
Maybe this is just my bias as a biological researcher, but if people are so willing to write about why Tuvel’s article is wrong, why must it also be retracted? Retraction should be reserved for issues on the order of fraud, not for simply being wrong. Guenther states that she doesn’t believe Tuvel was intentionally malicious. Intention may not mitigate the effects of something, but it should figure in to how one responds to a perceived slight. It just all seems so ridiculous.
THIS ARTICLE IS INSUFFICIENT! IT MUST BE DESTROYED!
Sorry for yelling. It’s just… things are insufficient just make me so angry.
Also, this signer “doesn’t think” Tuvel intended to hurt people. Sure, maybe she did to hurt people (she probably did), but the signer “doesn’t think” so.
It seems to me that “all of us” are not being called on to commit to accountability. The signers, the rage posters, etc are not being called on to commit to accountability. And accountability has taken a strange turn these days. When you post something publicly, with your name on it, you are being accountable. You are saying, here is my work for whatever it’s worth.
Meanwhile, the signers are refusing to do any of the soul-searching or accountability they are demanding from others. Why? Because they are right. Because they know they are right. Because they are listening. And the fact that some of us are also listening, but we’re hearing a different message? Well, THOSE people YOU”RE listening to don’t speak for the (black, trans, any other group) community. The signers, the rage posters, the harassers, however, are more than willing to listen to even one voice shouting in anger – because they are listening to the person who apparently does speak for the community.
I’ve always had a bit of problem with the formulation that if a person perceives themselves as having been oppressed, they are the proper judge of whether something is oppressive (or offensive, or whatever). I first heard this come up in the listen to the women debate, and I cringed. Yes, listen to the aggrieved group, but that doesn’t mean that a single person being offended, or even a number of people being offended, means they are right, and the action is offensive. With this formulation, the south is right to be aggrieved about attempts by non-southerners to remove the Confederate flag. The MRAs are right to be offended by feminism. The Neo-Nazis are right to be offended by all the “racial mixing”. Oh, you say, these are not oppressed minorities, they are oppressors? How do we know? They say the opposite. And now, that argument is being used against women. We are the oppressors. We oppress MRAs, but not just MRAs. We oppress trans people. We oppress people of color. Therefore, if we feel offended, we can safely be ignored, because we are obviously wrong.
It is one thing to listen to the oppressed group about their emotional responses to things; it is another thing to assume they are always right. It is still another (and the worst) thing to immediately turn that assumption of them being right into the utter destruction of the individual they believe committed epistemic violence against them.
Oppression and offense are rarely as tidy as some would have us believe. Whenever people rail against the (I think) obviously racist and gross Washington DC football team’s mascot, we are treated to the opinion of Native Americans who don’t find anything troubling in it. So, which oppressed people do we listen to? That’s easy—the ones who agree with us!
Translation: don’t discuss trans politics unless you are A) trans, or B) have “an awareness of the context, power dynamics, or stakes of these issues for trans people…”. Lisa Guenther was on the committee that accepted Tuvel’s dissertation, and so knows that Tuvel is capable in her philosophical thinking. Which means that her reversal is based solely on the outcry of one subset of trans activists.
So, don’t discuss trans politics unless you are A) trans, or B) agree with a particular subset of trans activists. (And those trans people that don’t agree with the favoured subset are to be ignored?)
‘You can have any opinion you like, as long as it agrees with mine.’
Thank you. All of this, the whole paragraph, the whole blog post. Absolutely spot on.
This is one part of what’s been bothering me about this whole witch-hunt. It’s that women are seen as uniquely privileged and oppressive to other groups, but not part of an oppressed group themselves. It’s that women are expected to be acutely sensitive to the issues of every other group, but that nobody has to be even passingly familiar with the issues affecting women. Accusations of “white feminism,” like accusations of “transphobia,” are increasingly being used to silence women regardless of what is being said. And that is simply old sexism wrapped up in a shiny new progressive package.
So what exactly is the supposed “impact”? What exactly is at stake if Tuvel and other philosophers muse about these issues?
I can’t find anything here but academese for, “you’re not allowed to question that.”
(Cross-posted, with tweaks, from FB)
“Transwomen are forever and always indistinguishable from non-transwomen!! Now let me tell you all the ways transwomen are different!!”
There’s a big difference between being hurt by discrimination, scorn and contempt due to membership in a group and being offended by ideas that oppose and threaten your own.
You wouldn’t think this was a controversial point, would you?
I am so happy to have found this site and all of you. And this:
“But more basically: what I wonder is why Tuvel is raked over the coals for insufficient awareness of the context, power dynamics, or stakes of these issues for trans people and people of color, with no corresponding chastisement or even mention of awareness of the context, power dynamics, or stakes of these issues for women.”
Thank you for saying this. This phenomenon infuriates me no end.
Me too.