Transiting Sex and Race

If someone can be 'transgender' or 'transsexual,' why not 'transracial'? A young feminist scholar made the mistake of asking. It's likely to destroy her career.
I hope that Prof. Tuvel consults a lawyer about this defamation; and while it looks to me like defamation per se (i.e., damages are presumed since the critics are impugning her competence in her profession), I would imagine showing damage would not be hard. How can Prof. Tuvel, for example, now use this repudiated but allegedly peer-reviewed article as part of her tenure process? Indeed, how can her department or college support her for tenure when she has been so vilified as a scholar and professional by people who work in her fields? I wonder did any of those professing solidarity with those who specialize in taking offense consider the very tangible harm they are doing to the author of this article?...

We have been living with an "atmosphere of reckless attack" in philosophy (as one correspondent put it to me in 2014) for awhile now. I hope this proves to be the final straw, and that the community will finally stand up and denounce this misconduct that should be anathema to a scholarly community. If Prof. Tuvel does decide to seek legal redress for what has happened to her, I will organize fundraising on her behalf. It really is time to stop this madness.
More here.

The thing is, as everyone knows, sex is a huge biological fact that impacts everything about us. Race is, at most, a heuristic way of talking about genetic differences in groups; more likely, it's a fiction largely created to sell early Modern Europeans on being OK with re-introducing slavery. It has a big social reality, but refers to nothing that is biologically real. Thus, if one can 'trans'it sex, one could surely 'trans'it race. To say otherwise is to hold that this social fiction has more impact on us than what is probably the single most important biological characteristic.

I suppose one could argue that this is in fact the case: that race, even without a real biological referent, is socially so important that it does indeed trump sex. Charles Mills, cited in the hated article, might make that argument; his latest book points in that direction. (I should note that I have met Charles Mills and heard him speak, and whatever you think of his subject matter, he is a consummate gentleman and unfailingly courteous.) I doubt that argument would pan out, but one could make it.

No one is bothering to try. The intent is simply to put this woman's head on a spike, as a warning to others. It has already worked with the board of the journal that, after double blind peer review, published her work. They are cowards, of course, but that is only to be expected of them. Only cowards survive in their field.

As said by Sir William Francis Butler: "The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards." Well, there you go.

21 comments:

raven said...

They can't just let the heretic spread lies. Who knows who might be corrupted.

The older I get, the more I am convinced the many comparisons of leftism to religion are spot on. Especially persuasive are the converts, who seem to invariably speak of having a minor question on this or that item in the litany and having the entire congregation turn on them en mass. Of course to a thinking person this immediately begs the question, why are they so defensive, and second, what else are they wrong about?
This is why conservatives often express frustration about debates with the left-they won't stay on topic, they evade logical trains, etc- there IS no logic there. Everything is in service to their god, Power.

David Foster said...

Here's a weird variant of the Turing Test that might shed some light on this matter: Suppose you could temporarily change your physical appearance to match someone either of another race or the opposite gender. (Tone of voice, too, in the case of gender)..but your brain/mind is still the same, no hormone changes, etc You have to impersonate someone of the target category as realistically as possible so that people will think that you are a real black man or a real woman..and you have to do this over a sustained amount of time, say a few days.

WIth which type of transition would it be easier to pass the test?

Gringo said...

If someone can be 'transgender' or 'transsexual,' why not 'transracial'? A young feminist scholar made the mistake of asking. It's likely to destroy her career.

If we accept A, which is ridiculous, why can't we also accept B, which is ridiculous in much the same manner as A?

Grim said...

...either of another race or the opposite gender.

If by 'race' you really just mean race, so that culture remains fixed, gender would obviously be harder to do. But if you were to ask me to fit into another culture (and culture is often linked to our ideas about race), that could be harder. I think most Americans could pass as an American of any other race, but it would probably be impossible for the average American to pass as authentically Japanese if they were required to adhere to Japan's cultural norms.

Gringo said...

raven
The older I get, the more I am convinced the many comparisons of leftism to religion are spot on.

I recommend that you read Joseph Bottum's book An Anxious Age: The Post-Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of America. From the Amazon review:
We live in a profoundly spiritual age--but in a very strange way, different from every other moment of our history. Huge swaths of American culture are driven by manic spiritual anxiety and relentless supernatural worry. Radicals and traditionalists, liberals and conservatives, together with politicians, artists, environmentalists, followers of food fads, and the chattering classes of television commentators: America is filled with people frantically seeking confirmation of their own essential goodness. We are a nation desperate to stand on the side of morality--to know that we are righteous and dwell in the light.

Or so Joseph Bottum argues in An Anxious Age, an account of modern America as a morality tale, formed by its spiritual disturbances. And the cause, he claims, is the most significant and least noticed historical fact of the last fifty years: the collapse of the Mainline Protestant churches that were the source of social consensus and cultural unity. Our dangerous spiritual anxieties, broken loose from the churches that once contained them, now madden everything in American life.


While the secular grandchildren have largely abandoned the Mainline Protestantism of their grandparents, the grandchildren share with their grandparents a concern with belonging to the Elect. The grandparents believed that their belonging to a given church and believing in its creed would grant them membership in the Elect. The grandchildren believe that by adhering to the Progressive social gospel- a gospel that changes from year to year and even month to month- they belong to the Elect. Those who do not adhere to the Progressive social gospel- the Deplorables- are among the Damned.

In reading Bottum's book, I was reminded of a family friend who, decades before his book was published, mirrored his description. She was the daughter of a Congregationalist minister. As an adult she left the Congregationalist church and transferred her faith to various progressive causes, such as Ban the Bomb. In middle age, one of her children became a disciple of an Indian guru, who shall remain nameless. She made a trip to India and was converted to this particular guru. Back to religion.

While she was continually searching for the righteous path, she was NOT self-righteous. She did not condemn friends who disagreed with her. She had a good sense of humor and easily laughed at herself. While I disagreed with many of her positions on religion and politics, she was one of my favorite people.

David Foster said...

Grim...good point. I was thinking of an American of a different race.

Gringo said...

Grim:
But if you were to ask me to fit into another culture (and culture is often linked to our ideas about race), that could be harder. I think most Americans could pass as an American of any other race, but it would probably be impossible for the average American to pass as authentically Japanese if they were required to adhere to Japan's cultural norms.

I am reminded of Eddy L. Harris's book Native Stranger: A Black American's Journey into the Heart of Africa. Harris found out that as an "Afro-American" in Africa, that he was more American than Afro.

From a biography of Eddie L. Harris:
Much of Harris' literary focus has been devoted to discovering the essence of the black experience and how it has been affected by forced emigration from Africa, its exposure to American culture, and the impact blacks have had on white culture in the United States. He has also been outspoken about what he considers the futility of American blacks who think of themselves as transplanted Africans. "Africa is not our home," he wrote in Native Stranger. "Should the volcano erupt, we will have no place but the United States. If it isn't going to work there, if we can't make it work there, it isn't going to work."

When I worked in Argentina, a country that was based on European immigration about as much as the US, the color of my hair and eyes could not distinguish me from many Argentines. Yet, it was still easy for Argentines to peg me as a Gringo- a foreigner. Complete strangers would come up to me to denounce the military regime. I didn't dress like an Argentine, who would have worn dark dress pants with a while or blue shirt. I would dress like an American- more colorful shirts or T-shirts. (As the T-shirts often had a US identification, they were apparently a giveaway.Which reminds me of seeing a "Boston White Sox" T-shirt in Bolivia. I should have bought it off the owner.) One time when I was hitching, a truck slowed down and stopped a short distance behind me. I ran towards the truck, which got going before I reached it. The next car picked me up. The driver, a medical student, told me that the initiative I showed in running after the truck indicated to me that I was a foreigner.

One way that my time working overseas turned me into a right-winger is that many leftists at the time and also today would make the assumption that being an American would be perceived as a stigma overseas. On the contrary, I found being identified as an American to work to my advantage. Had I not been proficient to fluent in Spanish, I might have concluded differently.

Grim said...

I also have found that my time overseas has convinced me to adhere to more conservative ideas. In my case, it was the realization that much of what I had assumed to be human nature was in fact culture. That makes the protection and preservation of culture suddenly much more important. Even the best culture may need to change sometimes, but a great deal more is at stake in changing the culture than I had believed as a youth.

Also, then you start asking 'What kind of cultures produce the best people?' My considerations along that line run toward Thucydides' answer: that the best men come from the sternest schools. The best poetry adheres to strict rules. That's not an entirely comfortable answer for an American, as our devotion to personal liberty cuts against strict rules and stern schools. But insofar as you elect to adhere to a serious discipline, it will profit you.

raven said...

"

Someone ran one half of this experiment in the 1960's- "Black Like Me".
Done to illustrate the racial divide, I wonder if today it would be called cultural appropriation. It has been a very long time since I read the book.

E Hines said...

Here's a weird variant of the Turing Test...Suppose you could temporarily change your physical appearance to match someone either of another race or the opposite gender. ... You have to impersonate someone of the target category as realistically as possible so that people will think that you are a real black man or a real woman..and you have to do this over a sustained amount of time, say a few days.

WIth which type of transition would it be easier to pass the test?


Who's being tested, and what constitutes passing? Many will feel constrained to accept you as you claim to be regardless of how well you imitate that state because...discrimination. How will your Turing test discriminate between those blind acceptors and those who truly are fooled into thinking you are what you claim to be?

Eric Hines

E Hines said...

That's not an entirely comfortable answer for an American, as our devotion to personal liberty cuts against strict rules and stern schools.

Depends on the American. Personal liberty demands personal responsibility, and that demands strict rules and especially demands stern schools. But there's that Conservatism rearing its ugly head.

Eric Hines

David Foster said...

"Who's being tested, and what constitutes passing? Many will feel constrained to accept you as you claim to be regardless of how well you imitate that state because...discrimination. How will your Turing test discriminate between those blind acceptors and those who truly are fooled into thinking you are what you claim to be?"

Good question. Dunno...I haven't thought it out that deeply.

A softer version of the test, in which it would probably be easier to define the passing criteria: write a short story in which the principal character is a person of a different race or gender from your own...and see whether it is believable to people of that race/gender as well as to those of your own. The assessors will probably be less-concerned about being accused of discrimination when assessing a fictional character.

Ymar Sakar said...

Muslims are deciding to convert to being a disciple of Jesus of Nazareth through the holy Ghost, miracles, and everything else that people are confused about in the West, including the Papacy.

See, even a superpower like the US can't do much for the hearts and minds of the Iraqis and Muslims and ragheads over there. But Lucifer and the rest of the divine entities have far greater reach, and time, than an Operation Iraqi Freedom to work on the hearts of men.

And it works out better for the time spent as well. A human entity, like the Pax Americana, can bomb people and blow them away. But only a truly enlightened being can convert them from the enemy's side, to their own. The one thing between the battle of good and evil is that both sides have this conversion power, and it makes absolutely no rational sense to the secular generals and the "military" experts at large.

It's not Chess, just a giant Go board. One generation is good, their children are evil. The children's children then convert to good, and the cycle starts all over again. In that sense, national borders are meaningless. Nations can fight over territory and ideals, but they won't make much progress. They will have to pick a side and be loyal to it, if they want the powers of the miracles which many Christians don't even believe in. The proof of those who stand with evil or good is the Proof of Divine Power demonstrated through their agents on Earth. If a witch has not enough power to save herself, then she isn't a witch. The old trials were quite logical on that. That's because the evil ones were the judges, but they didn't figure that one out in time.

Ymar Sakar said...

Everything is in service to their god, Power.

They do have a real god. Look up references to the "Queen of Heaven" that PillowC serves, Hussein's Allah, and so forth.

Also watch the conversion stories of Muslim to Christian. They are hilariously entertaining. Most Christians are cultural Christians and thus they are like the Pharisees to Jesus of Nazareth back in 1st AD.

Ymar Sakar said...

Many people mistake things about Leftist alliance and religion. It isn't a comparison or at least I never made it as such. The Left is a religion. That's a metaphor, at the least, and not a comparison. They are a religion. Same as Islam or the Roman Catholics. That is why they don't like Christians and why they like Muslims. If they were real atheists, they would reject all religions, like Christopher Hitchins did. If they really wanted a separation of church and state, the fake liberals wouldn't have sided with Iranian theocrats to put the Shia into power, getting a theocracy. That is supposed to be SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE, right, and many of the refugees got killed by their Islamic butt buddies and crashed back into the US under Carter. Good job, now Americans have to suffer their poison.

People refuse to think of them as such, thinking of it as a comparison, mostly because they have the dots but haven't connected the dots. They refuse to connect the dots. Something is wrong with them, not so much with the Left or religion. Human minds are only capable of so much flex. It is why the Alt Right are composed in tripartite of people who had good reasons to defect or convert or change their minds, being disillusioned with this generation's culture.

Ymar Sakar said...

I also have found that my time overseas has convinced me to adhere to more conservative ideas. In my case, it was the realization that much of what I had assumed to be human nature was in fact culture. That makes the protection and preservation of culture suddenly much more important. Even the best culture may need to change sometimes, but a great deal more is at stake in changing the culture than I had believed as a youth.

Reminds me of that Chinese incident you wrote about before, Grim, concerning how you wanted honesty but the innkeeper or whatever told you a white lie to avoid upsetting you. Culture Shock. Easy to understand why foreign nations and tribes slaughtered each other.

Indeed, a great deal more is at stake than you had once been led to believe. But you are outmatched in this war, so it is logical. You are up against Allah and Lucifer himself. Do you truly expect to be better at the Art of War than those divine entities, Grim?

How did the Leftist alliance, a clown car full of fools like Ayers that barely avoided blowing his balls off with his own bomb, manage to outmaneuver you and your fellow military "experts" in war, to the point where they have flipped to your own comrades to their side?

Because their mentor and instructor had a few thousand years on you and Sun Tzu. The angels have always had better technology than the United States. That is why they can teach and implant knowledge, as well as deceive. What is the first of a con man in finding targets?

Texan99 said...

Online people don't seem to realize I'm a woman until I tell them. In person, though, I suspect it would be readily apparent from how I interact, even if I am tomboyish in many ways.

douglas said...

" It (race) has a big social reality, but refers to nothing that is biologically real."
I think it's overreaching to say it has no biological reality- Sickle cell anemia, Tay-Sachs disease- there are racial elements to biology- but they are certainly not the clear cut lines that we often make them out to be.

AS to the issue of culture vs. race and being identified as an American when abroad, this may be even more illustrative- Most Americans don't realize how Europeans can often identify other Europeans (even though they're all 'white') without hearing them speak. There are visual and behavioral cues that can tip one off quite easily, if you know what to look for.

" In my case, it was the realization that much of what I had assumed to be human nature was in fact culture."

This, I think, is the root of the issue. I believe that much of what is discussed as being racial is in fact cultural (or sub-cultural). I suspect a police officer would be as cautious about a traffic stop of a white young man who appeared to embrace Hip-hop culture as warily as if his skin were darker. In fact, I'm pretty sure the most dangerous aspect of that set of descriptors in the eyes of the police is the 'young man' part. If you ask me, one of the most dangerous things we do is identify African-American sub-culture as something we have to accept whole and inviolable. So much of what is now considered AfAm culture is so destructive of those in it, and yet it's beyond critique- Rap music is 'authentic', never mind the highly non-PC lyrics about women, or the extolling of the criminal thug life.

For the good of our culture, we need to destroy the idea that race matters (As Rev. King exhorted us), and we need to be willing to criticize those aspects of our culture that are destructive. If we can't do that, the damage will continue to grow.

Grim said...

There are visual and behavioral cues that can tip one off quite easily, if you know what to look for.

You're probably right that I'm particularly insensitive to it. I frequently have people point out to me that "of course, I'm Asian" or "...Hispanic" or whatever. I would never have thought of them as being Asian or Hispanic if they hadn't told me to do so. (Which is not to say that I don't identify, say, Chinese nationals as in some sense "Asian." But that's not the same thing at all: they're Han Chinese, mostly, with the whole cultural as well as genetic specificity going on).

I remember watching a John Stewart piece around the election, and he was commenting on how people were trying to make sure everyone knew he was Jewish. "Doesn't my face do that?" he asked. But it doesn't, not to me. I'm very poor at recognizing such things.

For the good of our culture, we need to destroy the idea that race matters (As Rev. King exhorted us), and we need to be willing to criticize those aspects of our culture that are destructive. If we can't do that, the damage will continue to grow.

I agree with you completely. However, you should read Charles Mill's latest book for a strong counterargument for embracing racial identity. It's worth considering and understanding, even if you (as I) ultimately reject it.

Ymar Sakar said...

Online people don't seem to realize I'm a woman until I tell them. In person, though, I suspect it would be readily apparent from how I interact, even if I am tomboyish in many ways.

I can detect sex with enough of a sample size from analyzing the writing style. Your style, for example, is notably feminine.

Another case is when I sampled a commenter from Blackfive and other websites, and the style was feminine but the author self identified as male. I had thought this was a false positive for years, until that person later stated that he was a transgender, originally he was female. This topic was brought up because of transgender conflicts in social media.

Ah, see, I was right all along. One of the reasons why I don't pay attention to the judgment and views of others, is that they are almost always wrong, whereas I can trust my own judgment. An entity would pretty much have to be god to make me pay attention to them as my superior or equal. Like most humans, I can fake the social mask that deceives, but that's not the real person and not the real thoughts.

As for rap music, it is basically like Santeria or Lucifer worship or voodoo. They invite in unclean spirits. Hip Hop Hollywood has even admitted this is true, in online vids anyone can watch.

I remember watching a John Stewart piece around the election, and he was commenting on how people were trying to make sure everyone knew he was Jewish. "Doesn't my face do that?" he asked. But it doesn't, not to me. I'm very poor at recognizing such things.

Ultra perception talents like that tends to come from the autism spectrum of human min maxing.

douglas said...

Grim, the visual tips aren't just in one's features (thought that's part of it), but also mannerisms, clothing choices, and so forth. A white European with funky eyeglasses, particularly if blond, is almost certainly German or Swiss, for instance.

Thanks for the tip on Mills' book, I may have to check it out. I'm finding it more and more difficult to understand their arguments any more, at least on any serious level.