Transphobia: An Analysis | Philosophy Tube

the ancient stoic philosopher Epictetus apparently used to teach using this demonstration a visual experience is like this belief is like this a clear and definite experience is like this a knowledge is like that and only the wise man can have knowledge and then another bunch of philosophers for the skeptics kimmel it makes it higher generally about that before we dive into the remainder in this video I should say upfront that I am a cisgender for those of you who might be new to this sort of terminology that means that my gender matches the one I was assigned at birth so I'm not transgender and this video is pitched at six people who might be encountering these concepts for the very first time and although I can talk about metaphysics and ancient Greek skepticism until the cows come home there's a big list of trans creators and writers and philosophers down there in the description whose work you should definitely check out some of them actually helped me make this video because without their experience this discussion is incomplete and I'm actually incapable of being an expert on it if I'm your first exposure to these ideas then that's cool as long as I'm not well asked and as for my trans audience feel free to take the rest of class off and go to the pub alternatively stick around and tell me what I got wrong so let's begin with the work of trans philosophy professor Thalia Boettcher and I'd like to start by introducing you to the concept of your dad I'm not sure how well this will translate outside the UK but I'll do my best first things first your dad is not daddy daddy something else put Daddy out-of-your-mind your dad is not necessarily your actual dad or my actual dad he's more like the Platonic ideal of a certain kind of opinion however typically your dad is relatively privileged not always male not always older there are varying degrees of your dad maybe you are your dad but here's your dad 15 years ago if he's straight your dad would have said something casually homophobic something like this I've got no problem with gay people right no problem at all so long as they do it away from me I don't mind 15 years on your dad's learn that that sort of thing doesn't fly anymore and he's changed for the better according to betcha the philosophical core of homophobia and biphobia is the false belief that same-sex relationships are in some sense not as good as straight one's whether because they're supposed to be sinful or unnatural or whatever the version of the bigotry we're talking about says at its heart that kind of bigotry rests she says on an ethical claim a claim about what human beings should and should not do so when your dad said as long as they do it away from me he was still holding on to that core idea because he'd had been fine with what he perceived as a straight relationship happening near him he just thought that same-sex relationships weren't as good somehow although he had pruned the fungus of his bigotry he was still holding on to the Spore and in the 15 years hence he's realized that spore is false and harmful and he's let it go and become a better person but now your dad will say something like this oh yeah if people want to be cooled by whatever pronouns or wear whatever clothes or you know change their name that's okay with me I haven't got a problem with it it's all I think people should be able to do as they please maybe that's your position confession time years ago when I was an undergrad about 18 I was your dad when I and my enormous ly privileged bubble first encountered the concept of being transgender this was the position that I defaulted to it just seemed like that's what a nice person would do and I wanted to be nice and get on with everyone so I've met cisgender people of all ages and backgrounds and sexualities who hold this basically like a liberal minded and tolerant view which is still dangerously wrong so if that's you then that sure invites us to take the next step she says that whilst this outlook is in her opinion preferable to outright hostility against trans people like here dad's casual homophobia 15 years ago it's still holding on to the Spore because she says unlike homophobia and biphobia with a core false claim is an ethical one the core of a lot of the transphobia she's experienced and researched these metaphysical skepticism the false belief that trans people don't really exist as trans people but are really the gender they were assigned at birth and this metaphysical skepticism she says is what in the minds of bigots operates as the theoretical justification for putting trans people in the wrong prisons denying them access to domestic violence shelters banning it from public spaces misgendering them committing violence towards them and all manner of horrific treatment nowadays a skeptic or skeptic if you're in North America usually means somebody who prioritizes evidence especially scientific evidence in explaining things or at least someone who is to do that with the evidence as they see it on YouTube things don't always check out that way but the ancient Greeks had a far more radical form of skepticism one which was alive and well right now unlike the rational skeptics of today the skeptics of your were less keen on evidence in fact at times their position was pretty anti evidence their drive in question was how do you know the things that you claim to know you say all these things about the world about reason about what exists but you could be wrong for every experience you have which you think is evidence of the truth you can have an identical experience but which is false so you can never really say for certain that you know anything if you've studied a-level philosophy you might have encountered Rene Descartes and his idea of radical doubt similar sort of thing if you haven't read Descartes though don't worry about it in philosophy thinking about what exists is called metaphysics and thinking about knowledge and what it is and how we get it is called epistemology what the ancient skeptics were doing was subtly switching from one to the other they were putting metaphysics on the Shelf and saying from now on it's all about epistemology it's all about how you know and this is the same move that some people are making today we tend to divide ancient skepticism into two waves academic skepticism named after Plato's Academy and later Pianist skepticism although both schools were fond of debate and questioning the pianist splay stal OTT of emphasis on both sides being equal saying that for every point of view an equally strong and persuasive counterpoint could also be put forward unlike the kind of competitive debate a lot of contemporary rational skeptics value the goal the pianist had in mind was not to find which point of view in a debate wins all to reach a compromise but to suspend judgment indefinitely to ensure the debate never stops and thereby achieved what they called at her Axia a relaxed worry-free state don't ever say that anything is definitely true or than anything definitely exists don't believe anything just have your opinion know that it's just an opinion you'll never have to worry about whether or not you're right the ancient skeptic sexist and paratus writes those who hold the opinion that things are good or bad by nature are perpetually troubled when their lack what they believe to be good they take themselves to be persecuted by natural evils and pursue what so they think is good and run have acquired these things they experience more troubles for they are related beyond reason and measure and in fear of change they do anything so as not to lose what they believe to be good but those who make no determination about what is good and bad by nature neither avoid nor pursue anything with intensity and hence they are tranquil and sexless makes a tempting offer especially when it comes to politics if you've got the privilege to do it it is easier to just not pick a side to not watch the news to not have an opinion to just have another drink and that the world sort itself up for a while take control of your life today set yourself free and experience relief from belief ask your doctor if a Tirat CEO is right for you ataraxia worry less live more the metaphysical skepticism at the heart of a lot of transphobia has some noticeable effects on the political discourse surrounding trans rights one obvious example would be the activist slogan trans women are women trans men are men which is an ontological statement a statement about existence similarly Boettcher remarks that many trans people who get misgendered say it's not just rude but a factual error it does not reflect reality on the flip side if you trawl some of the transphobic corners of the internet you'll find some people upset because they think trans people are demanding special treatment when bigots assume falsely that trans people don't exist they deduce the next logical but false step that transphobia also does not exist and is to be similarly explained in terms of something else or explained away and if it didn't exist there would be no need for special legal protection against it so when your dad and 18-year old me encountering the concept for the first time says I don't have a problem with it people should be able to do what they like what we're really saying is trans people are the gender they were assigned at birth but we're just gonna play along with it because that's the nice thing to do so we're still holding on to the spore of the bigotry which survives and waits to either flourish in us again will be passed on and flourish in someone else but okay maybe you're still a little bit your dad and you're on board and you want everyone to be happy and protected and have legal rights if they need them but when you suggest that we sit down and talk about this maybe you feel people aren't willing to debate it with you or perhaps you're one of the people who watches my show and leaves comments like this I get where this guy's coming from but he could have presented things a bit more neutrally I thought this was supposed to be a philosophy channel more like ideology tube and yes I've deliberately and explicitly called the transfer bit position false in this video and moreover transphobic rather than gender critical the euphemism a lot of trans verbs like to try and hide and again understanding that metaphysical skepticism is at the heart of the transphobic position can help shed some light here since the position of the trans verb is that trans people don't really exist as trans people and the position of trans people is obviously that they do exist immediately we can see that no compromise is possible things either exist or they don't there's no middle ground so in any debate on this issue it's gonna be winner takes all the trans person then is in the impossible situation of having to prove their own existence to someone whose every response is gonna be how do you know how do you know how do you know it's as impossible as if it were reversed and the trans folk were asked to prove in the face of total metaphysical skepticism without they are sis if the transphobic knowledge is that trans people exist as trans people then that amounts to a total forfeit of their position so the strongest place a trans person could get to in that debate would still probably be one in which they are either lying or deluded about their own existence the deck is very much stacked in the trans folks favor so in that situation it's perhaps unsurprising that many though not all people would decide that faced with an opponent whose entire positions that total denial of your humanity as the kind of human being that you are the only winning move in such a game would be not to play moreover it's not just a rigged game but a risky one the price of failing to prove to assist people that they are the gender they say they are can be death for trans people betcha rights to invite me to a philosophical forum in which I prove my womanhood is to do something far different from inviting me to share my views on mathematical Platonism do you understand the risks it's one thing to spout views on the composition problem with both arrogance and ignorance it happens it's annoying but it's quite another thing to do this when we're talking about people people who are in the room people trying and succeeding to philosophize themselves because I insist and therefore I don't face transphobic violence it's an element of this discussion that I'm probably inadvertently gonna end up downplaying so remember those sources below I know that when I imagine a bigot I picture like a skinhead shouting in the street and a fair bit of that does go on but some transphobes will also cloak their bigotry in a cadet language and in particular in the language of feminism hence the acronym trans exclusionary radical feminists or turfs the academic feminist subset of trans folks one transphobic academic whose work you may encounter is Rae Blanchard who's already been thoroughly debunked by sharper minds than mine more recently though in 2014 for lots of a Sheila Jefferies wrote a provocative and controversial book called gender hurts among other things Jefferies falsely claims that the existence of trans people would erase lesbians and gay men since if a gay man could be attracted to somebody with a vagina or a lesbian could be attracted to somebody with a penis and she says wrongly those categories must have broken down again here we see the metaphysical denial at work trans folks today are sidelining metaphysics in order to focus on this question how do you know which we can keep posing again and again forever like a kid in a backseat of a car go why but why but why for eternity Jefferies refuses the metaphysical truth that some women have penises and some men have vaginas in order to focus on this question how do you know that someone is a lesbian okay how do you know that how do you know that writing many centuries after the ancient skeptics Scottish philosopher David Hume said that skepticism is a bit like coleslaw a little bit is okay but would you want to eat a meal that's just coleslaw Hume thought that nobody could maintain this kind of skepticism forever about everything you can ask yourself how do I know my teeth really exist but as soon as you bite into a sandwich you can't help but believe in a metaphysical reality someone can explore their sexuality by considering the a priori concepts of straight gay bisexual pansexual and what those mean or more likely they'll explore those things by actually living and finding out that way because there are more things in heaven and earth Jefferies then are dreamt of in your philosophy the great subvert sort of pill an item while the excessive principles of skepticism is action and employment and the occupations of common life these principles may flourish and triumph in the schools where it is indeed difficult if not impossible to refute them but as soon as they leave the shade and by the presence of the real objects which actuate our passions and sentiments are put in opposition to the more powerful principles of our nature they vanish like smoke and leave the most determined skeptic in the same condition as other mortals for here is the chief for most confounding objection to excessive skepticism that no durable goods can ever result from it while it remains in its full force and vigor we need only ask such a skeptic what his meaning is and what he proposes by all these curious researchers but if because all this cole slaw jian on my plate him raises an interesting question though what our transphobes trying to achieve with all of this hard-line skepticism why in the potluck of life are they only bringing industrial amounts of the blandest possible coleslaw well beyond just garden-variety bigotry one theoretical explanation might be that once we realize trans people exist and therefore must be legally acknowledged to exist we can start having more interesting conversations like what can we do about the fact that a lot of trans people don't have access to the health care they need what can we do about the fact that a lot of trans people are disproportionately more likely to be refused jobs once we acknowledge that people exist then we can have a conversation about material access to their human rights but as long as the debate don't stop and the metaphysical skepticism is maintained all those questions get delayed we never get to them as long as the music keeps playing no one gets to sit down and transfer has at least get the peace of mind of not having to sit next to somebody they don't like but in his letter from a Birmingham jail Martin Luther King makes an interesting distinction between the negative peace which is the absence of tension and the positive peace which is the presence of justice one thing better highlights is that regardless of the metaphysics the kind of violence and exclusion that trans people face wouldn't be justified either way and I don't want to paint an overly civilised picture of a transphobic position here frequently they do not pose their arguments in polite academic good-faith terms just to remain within the city of London and within recent memory in July of this year there was an incident where a bunch of trans verbs forced their way to the front of the Pride Parade in order to distribute transphobic leaflets to the public there is an ongoing campaign at time of recording to try and get the City of London cooperation to ban trans people from certain public spaces there's been fighting in Hyde Park a bunch of transphobes are putting up transphobic stickers around the place to try and make trans women in particular feel unwelcome and also make your dad feel like maybe he doesn't have to get rid of that spore after all this is not Bertrand Russell and lubricant Stein knocking back pints on the banks of the river in Cambridge and talking about philosophy right this is Street philosophy and it gets dirty because it's life and death there's one last instance of the metaphysics - epistemology shuffle but it's worth talking about and it's gonna lead us to our not conclusion but to be continued some transphobes will be heard to say just because somebody identifies as one thing doesn't make it so and there are sophisticated and unsophisticated versions of this argument Jefferies uses one version but so do all of the I identify as an attack helicopter means that you'll see floating around the internet this argument is an attack on a particular view of gender known as performative ISM the idea is that some statements are performative they not only say something but also do the thing they say at the same time like saying I promise is not just signaling that you give you a word but is in fact the act of giving your word or saying I do at a wedding by saying it you're performing the action similarly some thinkers have suggested that gender might work in a similar way by saying and doing your gender you make it so when trans folks say identifying as one gender doesn't make it so that's an attack on performative ISM but here's what they miss not every trans person believes the gender performative ISM is a good theory and it doesn't have to be true for trans rights to be worth taking seriously the skeptics question is how do you know you're the gender you say you are what makes you that gender and when asked in good faith ie not by trans folks if that's actually a pretty interesting question for all of us to which different sis and trans people will give you different answers a strict performative ist's might say that a trans man who used to perform womanhood was a woman and then changed gender when they changed performance somebody else might say that no actually he was a man his whole life and just took some to realize it somebody else might say that acting as if one our other theory of gender is true would be better from the point of view of trying to legally politically secure trans people's rights betch are actually thinks that the answer to the question what makes you the gender you are can be different in different contexts when the transfer says identifying is one thing doesn't make it so and dust the hands and walks away that's the end of the story they're making two mistakes firstly they're kind of reducing performative ism to just speech acts saying I identify as this whereas all sorts of other things might come under a more robust definition of the word performance like how you interact with other people the way you live there's also different kinds of performance and spoken word isn't the only one secondly and crucially they're missing the fact the gender performative ISM isn't the only theory of gender on the table betcha points out that trans scholars both within and without academia have been engaging with this question of what makes you the gender you are for about 50 years and despite the claims of a lot of trans folks that this is the discussion they don't want you to have all this discussion is blurred and incorrect and it's being censored it's been going on a long time and becha laments that a lot of trans verbs show a total ignorance of the history of trans scholarship on this question which might provide some interesting answers if they were to engage in good faith rather than in the spirit of total metaphysical skepticism so for the sake of argument we could actually grant that yes the act of identifying as a particular gender is not what causally makes that statement true it might turn out that strict gender performative ism is false but all that's needed for the project of advancing trans rights is for us to realize that self-identification statements about gender made by trans people can be true what exactly it is that makes them true ask three scholars and you'll get four opinions but the fact that they can be true means that the onus is on the rest of us assist people to take statements like that morally legally politically practically personally very very seriously special thanks to Casey explosion Riley J Dennis and Natalie win for working with me on the script for this video you can find links to their work and the work of several other trans creators below including free links to all of the sources by Thalia Boettcher cited in today's episode [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Philosophy Tube

Views: 1,445,142

Rating: 4.6679034 out of 5

Keywords: philosophy, scepticism, sextus empiricus, skepticism, Greek, cicero, metaphysics, feminism, david hume, gender

Id: yCxqdhZkxCo

Length: 23min 33sec (1413 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 12 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/randomfluffypup]

I (a cisgendered person) just used parts of this video to try and convince my friend (also cisgendered) to be more open minded about trans people. I tried to clamp down on the whole "transgender people exist, and it's kinda unfair to place the burden of proof on them to prove their own existence." but we ended up getting bogged down on terminology and the definitions of words.

However, I don't think he was arguing in bad faith, I think he was actually trying to sort out his world view on trans people. Maybe he's actually just uncomfortable with acknowledging that trans people exist and was using "skepticism" and "rationalism" as a shield to defend his views. He might not even be aware of what's he's doing.

I dunno, I hope u guys find this "real world" usage of this video interesting

[u/stray_witch]

As a trans person, I just want to re-echo a quote from the video:

Just to remain within the city of London and within recent memory in July of this year, there was an incident where a bunch of transphobes forced their way to the front of the Pride Parade in order to distribute transphobic leaflets to the public. there is an ongoing campaign at time of recording to try and get the City of London corporation to ban trans people from certain public spaces.there's been fighting in Hyde Park, a bunch of transphobes are putting up transphobic stickers around the place to try and make trans women in particular feel unwelcome, and also make your dad feel like maybe he doesn't have to get rid of that spore after all.

This is not Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein knocking back pints on the banks of the river in Cambridge and talking about philosophy, right- this is street philosophy, and it gets dirty because it's life and death

every year there's a running tally of trans people murdered. On trans subreddits it's not an uncommon story to hear of people who were kicked out of their homes by their own parents, lived in terrible squalid conditions, forced to do all sorts of things to survive. I personally know multiple trans people who've been or are homeless and living in the streets, begging or doing sex work to survive. Sex work used to be simply the only option for trans women to scrape by, and still remains extremely common because of how trans people get refused jobs. Trans people all over the world, certainly all over america, still get beaten up, killed, raped, threatened, called "faggot" and otherwise harassed verbally and physically on the streets, kicked out of establishments, refused service aggressively or passive aggressively even in cities that should know better, and law enforcement just doesn't give a shit, which means people can do to you pretty much whatever they want. Imagine everywhere you go, you get people giving you hostility and abuse. Imagine having to start with nothing because you had to flee or got kicked out of your home.

Excuse us if we become heated, this is not your normal philosophical question to us. If we "win" this debate, we can gain a normal life, if we "lose" we can very well be killed and the police won't even want to touch our files.

[u/Siantlark]

Holy shit that dril quote in the middle made me stop the video because I couldn't concentrate.

[u/psychedelic_slowcore]

shit I'm actually crying this video is fantastic

[u/TheRingshifter]

Man, PhilosophyTube has been so amazing recently. There's just so much good stuff in this video. It never feels incomprehensible or unclear, yet also never feels "obvious" or super surface-level. It's actually just really impressive to fit so much interesting stuff in such an understandable and short video! Plus, I just love the style and humour as well - I mean, that @dril tweet is probably like, the greatest joke of the 21st century, so sort of cheating to use that, but perfectly germane in this situation. But also just love stuff like the coleslaw metaphor, and little visual segments like with the crab cup.

[u/IsupportLGBT_nohomo]

Philosophy Tube -> dril tweet

I fucking love this o7

[u/GenuinelyLenin]

Olly is so great. My dream, aside from cuddling up together on a rainy day and falling asleep to a movie, would be him collaborating with Natalie and HBomberguy on a project.

[u/Parastract]

Interesting video but I don't understand why the position "I think people should be called by whatever pronoun they like, they should wear whatever they like, I don't have a problem with it at all, I think people should do as they please." is contrary to accepting that transpeople exist?

I recognize trans-men as men and trans-women as women but I also hold the before mention position. It's just that I don't have strong opinions on the subject.

[u/kafka_quixote]

I'm really curious to see the other understandings of gender that Olly hinted at in this video

Tbh I've only really read a lot of Butler and I'm curious about different theories of gender than performativity since performativity can have a sort of gap in it (and also it can play into the politics of passing)