I am very sorry for that. Ideally, subjects like this are mostly about empathy and learning, but its easy to get lost in jargon.
And some get lost deliberately.
Speaking of empathy, I am reminded of an episode of the Golden Girls where Blanche said of Dorothy's new friend Barbara Thornedyke, that she cares more about words than she do about people.
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I am very sorry for that. Ideally, subjects like this are mostly about empathy and learning, but its easy to get lost in jargon.And some get lost deliberately.
Speaking of empathy, I am reminded of an episode of the Golden Girls where Blanche said of Dorothy's new friend Barbara Thornedyke, that she cares more about words than she do about people.
It's okay to criticize others' techniques, but comments like that start to get a little personal. Let's focus more on the positives than taking digs at other posters.
Okay... Then don't participate in the conversation if you think it's overly specialized and useless.You are in the LGBT thread, on a gaming forum. It seems that you want to have a conversation that is very heavily focused in the language and viewpoints of a specialized field that other folks here have said is inaccessible to them.
Sometimes there are conversations in this widely ranging thread about topics I know nothing about or about things I find uninteresting/overly specialized. And that's okay! There are many conversations I'm not interested in, but that of course doesn't mean everyone else is uninterested in them. My solution is simple: I don't jump into those conversations.
Also, there is irony in someone who's used specialized medical jargon telling others to avoid jargon.
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It's okay to criticize others' techniques, but comments like that start to get a little personal. Let's focus more on the positives than taking digs at other posters.
I am very sorry for that. Ideally, subjects like this are mostly about empathy and learning, but its easy to get lost in jargon.And some get lost deliberately.
Speaking of empathy, I am reminded of an episode of the Golden Girls where Blanche said of Dorothy's new friend Barbara Thornedyke, that she cares more about words than she do about people.
Point taken.
But really, I do feel the need to point out that people often take digs at others and get away with it because it was done behind a wall of words and the moderators often do not catch it, as oppose to the rest of us who do not need to be so verbose.
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Gender Dysphoria is not listed as a mental disorder in the DSM-5....The DSM is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. You really don't get much more "mental disorder-y" than being included in the book of mental disorders.
Actually, while that is it's primary purpose, not everything in the DSM is a mental disorder. If you continued reading that paragraph, rather than clipping the relevant piece you wanted out of it, you would have seen that it is classified as a condition, not a mental disorder. In fact, it is called a disorder, but it is a medical disorder. Meaning that the primary fix is to allow the person to transition, physically, to whatever extent they feel is necessary. Now in the DSM IV, Gender Identity Disorder WAS listed as mental disorder. That's one of the biggest changes between the update that occurred last year.
One of the big problems with getting too far into jargon, as my conflict with Annabel a page or two back showed, is that it can breed misunderstanding when discussing the subject in a more generalized way. I have enough problems with regular English at times. Getting into jargon requires greater parsing, and the more I have to think about what you said the more likely it is I will misinterpret. And I admit my own arguments can be hard for people to access without me getting into jargon.
I do not think I am alone in that, either. The more complex language is actually a bit of a barrier to effective communication. That's why it remains limited to specialized fields.
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From the website: www.dailywritingtips.com
"Many people think that they sound smarter when they use big words. The truth of the matter is that smart communicators use words that (a) they understand and (b) their readers are likely to understand.
The purpose of writing is to communicate. Communication is the process by which meaning is created and exchanged. If the person who reads your writing doesn’t understand what you are trying to say, no communication occurs when he or she reads your writing.
In order to communicate effectively, you have to use language properly, and you have to use language that people are likely to understand."
One of the big problems with getting too far into jargon, as my conflict with Annabel a page or two back showed, is that it can breed misunderstanding when discussing the subject in a more generalized way. I have enough problems with regular English at times. Getting into jargon requires greater parsing, and the more I have to think about what you said the more likely it is I will misinterpret. And I admit my own arguments can be hard for people to access without me getting into jargon.
Using jargon is often a tactic to throw other people off during a discussion or a debate.
Kind of like how Enron try to throw Bethany McLean off but too bad for them, she knew them more than they do!
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I guess my first thought is what exactly does it mean to say "identify within binaries." Admittedly, the way psychiatric diagnoses operates is based off a polarization of genders. For example, the DSM-V marks that distress at one's assigned gender is a characteristic of gender dysphoria. In this case, a patient is ushered into medical surveillance for gender dysphoria as a consequence of the insisted binary, not because the binary exists within them.
Now, maybe there are trans and cis people that depend on opposition identity ("I'm not a man") within a binary to assert a claim over their gender identity ("therefor, I am a woman"). If this is the case, I do think it produces a rather significant problem for what I generally supposed as circumstantial solutions (the open-ending of the gender question). If some trans and cis people need the closed question of gender to end with male/female, then two things happen. First, the closed question necessarily forecloses possibility for those who don't identify within the binary, those who don't concretely identify within the binary, and all those unspeakable case that can't be enumerated because of the closed landscape of this binary gender. Second (as a consequence of the first), trans and cis people who need the closed question must necessarily stabilize the binary and it's respective categories. The need for a closed question requires the removal of bodies that upset the social stability of sex/gender binaries.
Now, I am going to go out on a limb here and say that I don't think that either trans or cis people need opposition identity to assert a claim over their gender identity. I think cultivating a gender ought to be a positive process, where we appropriate the elements of our gender and accumulate our identity. I think that our current system places a great deal of emphasis of elements of gender that have been inaugurated into biomedical discourse, and as a consequence creates impossible situations for trans and cis people. The DSM-V outlines that to be diagnosed with gender dysphoria one must experience significant distress or impairment with their assigned sex. It isn't enough that people want or need to be the gender that they are, medical discourse makes gender a negative process, one where suffering is the "critical element of gender dysphoria."
First, thanks for the reply, Annabel; I think I now see what you mean more clearly. I’ll definitely see if I can find Fausto-Sterling next time I’m at the library, too.
I would just like try to unpack things a bit more carefully, because I find the questions you raise interesting.
As to identifying within binaries, I was thinking not so much that people think the binary is necessarily a part of them, but in a more active sense that they might be able to find a more or less comfortable spot for themselves in the range of possibilities afforded by the binary as understood by their culture, and against the limits of which they might also push. I’m thinking of people who might be perfectly happy thinking of themselves as women or men as conventionally understood, but might also be concerned with how those categories are formed, enforced, and with what consequences for whom.
I’m not sure that this necessarily results in opposition in a very strict sense. I’ve seen an attempt at two-track systems in which, for example, gender is viewed as a combination of “woman-ness” and “man-ness” such that non-gendered identities wouldn’t feel much of either, while genderfluid identities, say, could feel high levels of both “woman-ness” and “man-ness.” I also wonder whether attempts at translating ideas of “third-gender”-s might be similar, since how would one think more genders than one is used to short of some form of analogy? For that matter, what are the implications of terms like “two-spirit?”
I’m also not sure how tempting it is in general to collapse gender into sex, though I think I can imagine why some people might want to postulate a stronger connection between the two, such as people who might be comfortable with the idea that anyone can do any gender but who distinguish their own trans* identities, perhaps on the level of the body. Again, I wonder if an oppositional identity could be avoided here too by opening up sex in a way similar to that of gender, by looking at what actually goes into one’s ideas of both.
Ultimately, I’m interested in how we can understand and respect the differences in everyone’s gender identities. If I might borrow your words, I would also like to say that “I don't think that either trans or cis people need opposition identity to assert a claim over their gender identity,” and I certainly don’t want to exclude anyone by unquestioningly accepting everyone’s take on sex/gender binaries, but I do want to understand where everyone’s coming from on their own terms as much as possible, so we can open up the binaries all the more effectively.
I love jargon. But even I get lost sometimes.
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I wanted to post earlier that I felt a blush of guilty self-consciousness when I saw the request to tone the jargon down a bit. I'll try to rein myself in, though I'm half-tempted to start a thread in the off-topic section called "Post-structuralist Paizonians Pontificate," where all topics are welcome, so long as they are (1) treated in the appropriate jargon, and (2) treated in deadly seriousness (no cheating!). ;)
In all earnest, though, is there a way to offer one's best casual efforts at a nutshell version of some of the stickier bits of jargon that have come up without sounding terribly pretentious? I ask because ideally I should eventually be able to do this, at least from a basic undergraduate-level literary theory perspective. (Strict cultural studies and philosophy, for example, aren't my thing.) For some of us, I imagine, the jargon is just the way we've been trained to think about these things. If there are particular ideas that people are willing to identify as jargon-y, I might be able to take a shot at them in spoilers, and try to get on with more LGBT gamer experience/life story in the body of my posts, as per the long-distant suggestion in this thread's opening post. (My thanks to Dogbladewarrior, wherever he is now.)
In all earnest, though, is there a way to offer one's best casual efforts at a nutshell version of some of the stickier bits of jargon that have come up without sounding terribly pretentious? For some of us, I imagine, the jargon is just the way we've been trained to think about these things.
Actually, there is a big difference between being trained to think and write that way, as opposed to deliberately using jargon and big words to directly or indirectly put down other people.
Qunnessaa, I'll take you up on that. In your last post you use the word opposition in what seems to be a very specific and non-standard way and I'm not really sure exactly what you mean by opposition identity. Could you please clarify? Thanks. :)
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From earlier in the thread:
Now, maybe there are trans and cis people that depend on opposition identity ("I'm not a man") within a binary to assert a claim over their gender identity ("therefor, I am a woman")... Now, I am going to go out on a limb here and say that I don't think that either trans or cis people need opposition identity to assert a claim over their gender identity. I think cultivating a gender ought to be a positive process, where we appropriate the elements of our gender and accumulate our identity... It isn't enough that people want or need to be the gender that they are, medical discourse makes gender a negative process, one where suffering is the "critical element of gender dysphoria."
Opposition identity is found in statements like "I'm not a man, therefore, I am a woman". It's one's identity being defined in terms of what one is not, rather than in terms of what one is.
To my knowledge it's not a standard term. On the other hand, I'm not aware of any standard term for this phenomenon.
From earlier in the thread:Now, maybe there are trans and cis people that depend on opposition identity ("I'm not a man") within a binary to assert a claim over their gender identity ("therefor, I am a woman")... Now, I am going to go out on a limb here and say that I don't think that either trans or cis people need opposition identity to assert a claim over their gender identity. I think cultivating a gender ought to be a positive process, where we appropriate the elements of our gender and accumulate our identity... It isn't enough that people want or need to be the gender that they are, medical discourse makes gender a negative process, one where suffering is the "critical element of gender dysphoria."Opposition identity is found in statements like "I'm not a man, therefore, I am a woman". It's one's identity being defined in terms of what one is not, rather than in terms of what one is.
To my knowledge it's not a standard term. On the other hand, I'm not aware of any standard term for this phenomenon.
Thank you. That was very helpful.
"complement"?
If you are in set A, and not a member of subset B, then you must be in the set (A-B) (the complement of B). Or some such.
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Qunnessaa, I'll take you up on that. In your last post you use the word opposition in what seems to be a very specific and non-standard way and I'm not really sure exactly what you mean by opposition identity. Could you please clarify? Thanks. :)
Alright, let’s see what I can do.
First, I think Vivianne pretty much nailed it in saying, “Opposition identity is found in statements like ‘I'm not a man, therefore, I am a woman.’”
That’s opposition in terms of opposites like evil/good, cold/hot, wet/dry. So we might say that opposition identity primarily thinks of things as being the opposite of what they are not, and vice versa. I’m trying to be specific because we can have relations of “is” and “is not” that are not simple opposites as things get more complicated. Light/dark is one thing, but when we think “not-blue” do we automatically think “orange,” or do we think or red, yellow, green, purple, or just other colours in general? Of course, it is repugnant to think of man/woman as a pair of opposites, as if womanliness involved the negation of each quality associated with manliness. That easily leads to sexism.
I suppose another way of looking at it is, why should being a “not-man” lead one to conclude that one is one particular sort of “not-man” called woman? Why should there be only two options? That sort of question might get one to think about “binaries,” which are an important part of the context in which Annabel and I were thrashing out senses of the word “opposition.” Thus, Annabel wrote, “Now, maybe there are trans and cis people that depend on opposition identity ("I'm not a man") within a binary to assert a claim over their gender identity ("therefor, I am a woman").” (My emphasis.)
The thing is that binaries like hot/cold, dry/wet and so on have their uses, obviously, but things get muddled up when people start comparing binaries because they get carried away with organizing things in that way. To use one of the classic examples, if we take the binaries I started this paragraph with and add things like light/dark, good/evil, rational/irrational, spirit/matter, yin/yang, historically, many cultures have encouraged people to draw parallels between them: is spirit to matter as good is to evil? If one were to think of “man” and “woman” as this sort of binary, which term falls on which side?
All this is to say that we can connect a certain sense of “opposition” with a certain sense of “binary.” What I was trying to do in my post was see if we could think about them in other ways.
When I was talking about opposition “in a very strict sense,” I was thinking about defining “opposition” in terms of opposites, as I’ve been trying to work out in this post. But there are other ways of defining “opposition,” such as disagreement or conflict between things that are not opposites as such. For example, the party in power has its “loyal opposition,” but surely in most cases that’s not a matter of opposites – we can even have more than one party in the opposition, and how much does government really change between administrations?
I wonder if something similar could be done with “binary:” rather than “two and only two categories,” could we have “somehow related to two?” That’s what I was trying to get at in my example of the two-track model of gender: if “man-ness” and “woman-ness” are independent, one might be able to preserve both “man” and “woman” while also making room for other genders. There’s still a two in there, so the model is binary on some level, but it’s arguably a better use or understanding of how a binary might work.
I hope that helps. I was mainly using “opposition” in the sense I understood it to have in the post I was responding to, as in the sentence Vivianne quoted previously, and I was using it that way when I agreed with Annabel’s idea that people don’t need opposition identity to work with gender. However, I also wanted to consider whether, if we define different genders (such that X is not Y, say), they could be considered to be in opposition in a more positive sense than two opposites at loggerheads with each other.
Thanks Qunnessaa. I have a much better idea of what you were trying to say now. I find the idea of a sliding scale to be interesting. But I'm not sure how that works on things like forms. I mean, it sounds good in theory. I just don't know how to translate that kind of idea into practicalities. It seems like you'd almost need to make a list of features to combine into a score or something like that. I don't know. Maybe there are easier ways to organize something like that. But I do know that bureaucracy loves its forms so it would definitely be something to take into consideration.
Thanks Qunnessaa. I have a much better idea of what you were trying to say now. I find the idea of a sliding scale to be interesting. But I'm not sure how that works on things like forms. I mean, it sounds good in theory. I just don't know how to translate that kind of idea into practicalities. It seems like you'd almost need to make a list of features to combine into a score or something like that. I don't know. Maybe there are easier ways to organize something like that. But I do know that bureaucracy loves its forms so it would definitely be something to take into consideration.
Oh, I was just thinking about it as a way of visualizing the permutations in a more inclusive way. I wasn’t planning to go all Kinsey on the idea and try to quantitatively grade identities: Mr. X, now with 20% more manliness! I think a free space for self-identification is the way to go for forms and the like.
Anyway, the sliding qualitative scales thing came from the image here. Some of the comments point out the limitations.
Thanks Qunnessaa. I have a much better idea of what you were trying to say now. I find the idea of a sliding scale to be interesting. But I'm not sure how that works on things like forms. I mean, it sounds good in theory. I just don't know how to translate that kind of idea into practicalities. It seems like you'd almost need to make a list of features to combine into a score or something like that. I don't know. Maybe there are easier ways to organize something like that. But I do know that bureaucracy loves its forms so it would definitely be something to take into consideration.Oh, I was just thinking about it as a way of visualizing the permutations in a more inclusive way. I wasn’t planning to go all Kinsey on the idea and try to quantitatively grade identities: Mr. X, now with 20% more manliness! I think a free space for self-identification is the way to go for forms and the like.
Anyway, the sliding qualitative scales thing came from the image here. Some of the comments point out the limitations.
That was both informative and adorable. :)
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Breaking news! A Texas judge just struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriage: link
Sadly he imposed a stay pending appeal—no beachhead possible yet.
Breaking news! A Texas judge just struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriage: link
Sadly he imposed a stay pending appeal—no beachhead possible yet.
Hopefully, there won't be an appeal!
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Hopefully, there won't be an appeal!Breaking news! A Texas judge just struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriage: link
Sadly he imposed a stay pending appeal—no beachhead possible yet.
They've already announced an appeal sadly. Although these are going to continue to fail based on the supreme court case with DOMA.
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I was somewhat surprised yesterday when the objection of jargon arose. Despite the claims otherwise, my writing was partially organized around vetting obscure phrases and terms. For example, I deliberately avoid the term "socially constructed" (and its derivatives) because the phrase always trips people up. I broke when Bob_Loblaw elected to use it, so as to share a common term. However, the rapid derailment (and spectacular crash!) of the topic gave me reason to take a step back and think on what happened.
I suppose the most obvious thing to address is the subject of jargon itself. Many people have brought this up, and sadly I am somewhat at a loss of what exactly is the problem. Maybe others mean something different when they say "jargon," but I've always thought of it as a "highly specific term or phrase, with special limits on meaning, that is used exclusively within a particular discipline."
So, I revisited my previous posts, and read them for what I saw as clear instances of jargon. I found five, four of which I only used once (surveillance was used twice), and one that was immediately followed up with an explanation of what it means ("not being a scientific realist"). I think that these words are important, and as such made a list below that I think, taken together, make sense of why they were used and why they matter.
Funnily enough, jargon is a register, where meaning is highly specific and deliberately regulated. And doubly funny is that this list of jargon is an instance where "the register" (this list) is laid out to be plainly seen. Not all registers are obvious, and there are methods that historians, sociologists, and anthropologists can use to "uncover" the registers of particular discourses.
In this thread, I have been working to discuss and to uncover the register of gender/sex in medical discourse, the inherent instability of the gender/sex register that is hidden, and ways in which this instability can be actualized for the benefit of LGBT and queer people.
Foucault focuses on the human sciences of biology (biomedicine), psychology, and sociology as particular important instances power has been gained over the human body through the production of knowledge. An important thing to consider here is that the translation of power into scientific knowledge does not make the "truths" produced any less scientific.
I do have a particular distaste for bad science, and am easily drawn into discussions of the empirical and statistical limits of certain scientific projects. My personal history engaged with brilliant scientists and bold science has made me slightly sensitive to instances where people have overstepped the evidence in favor of their own pet theories. But (and this is a big but), my primary concern isn't whether medical practices are scientific supported or not. I am concerned over what forms disciplined knowledge takes over the human body, and what ways that limits life for LGBT and queer folks.
Scientific Realism I think I explained this, but this particular phrase has a deep and complex meaning which certainly goes beyond the needs of this register. But because I am sensing some confusion about my particular position regarding science, I didn't place this in spoiler tags.
Suffice it to say, someone (me, specifically) can be a scientific arealist (or some people call "anti-realist") while still holding that science creates useful knowledge. In fact, I am willing to go so far to say that disciplined scientific knowledge has the capacity to generate very good things. I look at my own personal contributions to scientific knowledge proudly. Not being a scientific realist doesn't make me anti-science.
The French and American revolutions that spawned modernity also created a "meta-narrative" of scientific discourse that held scientists, specifically medical doctors, as sages who would in time abolish sickness and so solve all of humanity's problems. For the nineteenth-century moderns, medical doctors replaced the discredited medieval clergy; physicians save bodies, not souls. This myth was part of the greater discourse of the humanist and Enlightenment schools of thought that believed the human body to be the sum of a person: biological reductionism that became a powerful tool of the new sages: Through thorough examination (gazing) of a body, a doctor deduces symptom, illness, and cause, therefore achieving unparalleled understanding of the patient — hence, the doctor's medical gaze was believed to penetrate surface illusions, in near-mystical discovery of hidden truth.
In so many words, the clinical/medical gaze is the myth that doctors see the human body "pure of all intervention" and in "the language spoken by the things themselves" (Foucault, 1975). That was Foucualt saying, very poetically I might add, that the medical gaze is the idea/myth that medical professionals can determine truth of bodies and their health without being biased by culture or society. This fact is, in part, a consequence that disciplined biomedical knowledge is invested in power that depends on the stability of its register. This "investing of power" occurs through social practices stabilize the always unstable register.
Looking back on these terms, I think it was a good idea to choose them (even though I regret the confusion they may have caused). For each of these, I ended up using them because (as evinced in this register), they encapsulate some very large concepts that seemed too big to explain on their own. I don't really think they can be easily explained on their own, and was afraid they'd "run away with me" from the subject at hand (that is, opening up the possibility for expanding queer life). But many of these ideas required an understanding of the other terms in this register, and so explaining them in sequence (and using Qunnessaa's spoiler trick) I think made it easier.
If these terms are jargon, then maybe it's good that they're jargon. I mean, if medical practice or biological science requires jargon to get their important work done, then I think it follows that the LGBT and queer community requires terms to get our work done.
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Thank you for explaining those terms, Annabel. It does make it easier to understand. I think the most difficult thing about 'jargon' is the times when familiar words are used in unfamiliar ways (like your example above with register). I often have the same problem with business speak. The classic "I know what all those words mean, but not when you use them in that way" response.
Out of curiosity, who/what is Foucalt? I am completely not familiar, so when you talked about something being a Foucaltian term I was curious what that actually meant.
Out of curiosity, who/what is Foucalt? I am completely not familiar, so when you talked about something being a Foucaltian term I was curious what that actually meant.
Michel Foucault was a 20th century french historian who wrote a number of hugely influential books. His work has changed (and continues to change) the fields of history, psychiatry, biology, medicine, philosophy of science... I should stop here.
It is worth noting that his writing is very well known for being difficult to parse, in part because his writing tried to talk about things that were completely novel for his time. He is also very well known for explaining things through elegant extended metaphor. For example, the first chapter of Les Mots et les Choses (The Order of Things), he uses Las meninas to explain the concept of episteme, or "way of thinking," by demonstrating that Las meninas stood at a profound transition in "thinking about" European art. The extended metaphor also had a double meaning (Foucault was supremely clever like that), where the actual details of the painting were used to describe what Foucault identified as the characteristics of the modern epistem of the human sciences (psychology, sociology, and biology). It is a beautifully written chapter.
It is not uncommon that people are unaware of him (I've had lots of friends and family ask me "Michel Fou-Who?"). Though he was supremely well known when he was alive, having been involved in social activism throughout Europe, having taught at a number of prestigious French, Tunisia, and American universities, and even engaged in public, televised discussions and debates with Noam Chomsky! Sadly, he died in 1984 in France of complications related to an HIV infection.
Suffice it to say, I greatly admire his work and will attempt to talk about him at any possible opportunity :P
Scientific Realism I think I explained this, but this particular phrase has a deep and complex meaning which certainly goes beyond the needs of this register. But because I am sensing some confusion about my particular position regarding science, I didn't place this in spoiler tags.
Suffice it to say, someone (me, specifically) can be a scientific arealist (or some people call "anti-realist") while still holding that science creates useful knowledge. In fact, I am willing to go so far to say that disciplined scientific knowledge has the capacity to generate very good things. I look at my own personal contributions to scientific knowledge proudly. Not being a scientific realist doesn't make me anti-science.
However for the benefit of those without a background in philosophy, you might wish to actually provide a definition of Scientific Realism. You don't seem to have provided one above.
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Okay... Then don't participate in the conversation if you think it's overly specialized and useless.You are in the LGBT thread, on a gaming forum. It seems that you want to have a conversation that is very heavily focused in the language and viewpoints of a specialized field that other folks here have said is inaccessible to them.Sometimes there are conversations in this widely ranging thread about topics I know nothing about or about things I find uninteresting/overly specialized. And that's okay! There are many conversations I'm not interested in, but that of course doesn't mean everyone else is uninterested in them. My solution is simple: I don't jump into those conversations.
Also, there is irony in someone who's used specialized medical jargon telling others to avoid jargon.
There's jargon and then there's jargon. On the one hand you can have highly specialized terms in science that are quite specific and between those with a background in those fields, it clarifies discussion. But at the very same time for something like chemistry or medicine that are grounded in the quantifiable, whatever theories that exist in those fields which use highly specific jargon, it's possible to describe them to someone outside those fields using much simpler language.
There's also that second type of jargon, that if I may paraphrase the words of the much underrated philosopher Calvin, in his monograph 'The Dynamics of Interbeing and Monological Imperatives in Dick and Jane: A study in Psychic Transrelational Gender Modes' describes as being used to "inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity."
Another exploration of the difference might be found in the publication of Alan Sokal's brilliant "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" in the postmodern cultural studies journal 'Social Text'. [An intentionally nonsensical paper submitted just to see if his academic standing and the incomprehensibility of the text would make it seem intellectual enough for the editors to just publish it, which to their embarrassment, they did].
I'll admit a bias against certain schools of thought and their attempts to define the world through terminology of their own invention that at no point derives from experimentation. If something cannot be tested for confirmation or falsifiability, it isn't proper science, and unfortunately I see it as misguided at best to try to define human gender identity or sexual orientation via these.
Thanks for answering my question, Annabel. Foucalt sounds like he was a very interesting guy. :)
And I second the request for a definition of scientific realism. I don't know what that's talking about at all. I've never really gone in for philosophy. I don't have anything against it. It's just the little exposure I've had to it was from folks who were in it for the arguments. Which drives me freaking nuts. I hate it when people switch sides in an argument just because they like to argue. So I've avoided philosophy ever since.
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And I second the request for a definition of scientific realism.
I think van Fraassen does a good job giving a concise definition of scientific realism:
Scientific realism is the position that scientific theory construction aims to give us a literally true story of what the world is like, and that acceptance of a scientific theory involves the belief that it is true. Accordingly, [scientific] anti-realism is a position according to which the aim of science can well be served without giving such a literally true story, and acceptance of a theory may properly involve something less (or other) than belief that it is true.
Anti-realism isn't really a single thing. Different anti-realists have different ideas on what it means to accept a scientific theory, what the aims of science are, etc. Further, anti-realism doesn't require one to think that scientific theories don't work, contrary to what some naive scientific realists thing (see, for example, this xkcd comic). It's empirical fact that scientific theories have been deployed to produce e.g. technology. Regardless of whether you think electrons are real physical objects or whether you think they are abstract objects, ideas postulated to explain certain phenomena (or you may be agnostic on the question), computers still work. And of course, being a scientific realist doesn't mean one thinks every current scientific theory is true. Recognizing something as bad science doesn't require one to think one way or the other on this issue. Realists and anti-realists can agree that the rash of computer generated nonsense papers being published in computer science journals is a bad thing.
Thanks for answering my question, Annabel. Foucalt sounds like he was a very interesting guy. :)
He certainly is pretty interesting.
Regarding the question about scientific realism, I want to reiterate my apprehension about pursuing this subject. This is mostly because I don't think it necessarily adds anything to the discussion. Two scientific realists can hold views that are in contradiction with each other. Conversely, two antirealists can be at odds too. Even strangely, and antirealist and a realist can find themselves in agreement about broad range of things, so broad in fact that the disagreement is almost unremarkable.
At it's core, the concern about scientific realism is centered on a concern about the meanings of words like "fact," "real," and "true." When left alone, these words are almost meaningless. The philosopher of science Ian Hacking calls these "elevator words" because they work to "elevate" whatever thought they're applied to. Let me give a kind of clumsy example: If I were to say, "ghosts are scary," I don't think much would be thought. But if I say "ghosts are real," now everyone has to contend with a different kind of claim. People have to parse what I mean by real. Did I see a ghost? Do I have proof of a ghost? Do I have scientific proof of a ghost? Am I talking about people dressed up as ghosts?
By introducing the word "fact," "real," and "true" people have to begin parsing in what sense I mean "fact," "real," and "true." So, when I say I am an antirealist, I mostly mean that I am very interested in investigating under what conditions are we "elevating" certain statements to the status of "fact," "real," and "true." How those conditions work to shape, create, or precondition the things that are worthy of elevation? And what things are necessarily foreclosed as "unreal" or "false" as part of privileging those certain worthy things?
I hope this provides some clarification. But I want to repeat that I don't think that being a realist or antirealist necessarily important in the context of the ongoing conversation.
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Thank you, Vivianne and Annabel. Scientific realism may not really be a part of the discussion at large, but understanding what it means and what you were referencing actually clears up a large part of what you were talking about in the first place. Context is very helpful. :)
First, thanks for the reply, Annabel; I think I now see what you mean more clearly. I’ll definitely see if I can find Fausto-Sterling next time I’m at the library, too.
Thank you, I really enjoyed the ideas being unpacked about the binaries. I always think it's a pretty interesting issue: both the immediate project to parse the contents of "sex" and "gender," and the metaproject of investigating how the line between sex and gender is constituted as part of the insisted nature/culture division. I don't have any immediate thoughts, but it is thought provoking.
As to identifying within binaries, I was thinking not so much that people think the binary is necessarily a part of them, but in a more active sense that they might be able to find a more or less comfortable spot for themselves in the range of possibilities afforded by the binary as understood by their culture, and against the limits of which they might also push. I’m thinking of people who might be perfectly happy thinking of themselves as women or men as conventionally understood, but might also be concerned with how those categories are formed, enforced, and with what consequences for whom.
I think that makes sense. I have no doubt that there are many trans and cis people who find themselves very comfortable in social and psychological positions that are typically described as typically gendered. I don't think that these people are obligated to place themselves in distress just so that we can live a fantasy that no one fits into typically typified binary genders. I just want to make sure that we are proactively making room for the comfort of those who aren't so lucky to fall into the acceptable range and binaries of gender.
I’m not sure that this necessarily results in opposition in a very strict sense. I’ve seen an attempt at two-track systems in which, for example, gender is viewed as a combination of “woman-ness” and “man-ness” such that non-gendered identities wouldn’t feel much of either, while genderfluid identities, say, could feel high levels of both “woman-ness” and “man-ness.” I also wonder whether attempts at translating ideas of “third-gender”-s might be similar, since how would one think more genders than one is used to short of some form of analogy? For that matter, what are the implications of terms like “two-spirit?”
Um, maybe I am not quite understanding correctly. But as far as I see it, "translating" these not-binary genders into a binary gender systems necessarily renders bodies composite but incomplete. If the specific systems necessarily insists on one gender or the other, then bodies that enter into those systems will be disciplined until they conform (or the third option being figurative or literal death). I don't want to be completely bleak, but I just am skeptical of the outcome of translation where the binary remains intact (i.e. term “woman-ness” and “man-ness” remain stable).
In Undoing Gender, Judith Butler talks about the concept of "cultural translation:"
The point is not to assimilate foreign or unfamiliar notions of gender or humanness into our own as if it is simply a matter of incorporation alienness into an established lexicon. Cultural translation is also a process of yielding our most fundamental categories, that is, seeing how and why they break up, require resignification when they encounter the limits of an available episteme: what is unknown or not yet known. It is crucial to recognize that the notion of the human will only be built over time in and by the process of cultural translation, where it is not a translation between two languages that stay enclosed, distinct, unified. But rather, translation will compel each language to change in order to apprehend the other, and this apprehension, at the limit of what is familiar, parochial, and already known, will be the occasion for both an ethical and social transformation. It will constitute a loss, a disorientation, but one in which the human stands a chance of coming into being anew.
My thought is: if these things outside of the gender binary can be rendered plainly, then no culture translation has taken place. What we recognize as human will remain stunted, and the opportunity for life narrowed. Cultural translation will happen when we yeild our binary to its inherent instability, to watch it "break up." When we reach down to pick up the pieces, our goal will not to put them back together as they were, but to transform them for the better.
Most amusing postmodernist text I've ever read
In which, IIRC, the writer perversely praises Zane Gray over Robert Musil. Neither of whom I've read, but feel comfortable commenting on, so you can see how much I gained from this book.
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I’m not sure that this necessarily results in opposition in a very strict sense. I’ve seen an attempt at two-track systems in which, for example, gender is viewed as a combination of “woman-ness” and “man-ness” such that non-gendered identities wouldn’t feel much of either, while genderfluid identities, say, could feel high levels of both “woman-ness” and “man-ness.” I also wonder whether attempts at translating ideas of “third-gender”-s might be similar, since how would one think more genders than one is used to short of some form of analogy? For that matter, what are the implications of terms like “two-spirit?”Um, maybe I am not quite understanding correctly. But as far as I see it, "translating" these not-binary genders into a binary gender systems necessarily renders bodies composite but incomplete. If the specific systems necessarily insists on one gender or the other, then bodies that enter into those systems will be disciplined until they conform (or the third option being figurative or literal death). I don't want to be completely bleak, but I just am skeptical of the outcome of translation where the binary remains intact (i.e. term “woman-ness” and “man-ness” remain stable).
[Wonderful Judith Butler quote snipped for space.]My thought is: if these things outside of the gender binary can be rendered plainly, then no culture translation has taken place. What we recognize as human will remain stunted, and the opportunity for life narrowed. Cultural translation will happen when we yeild our binary to its inherent instability, to watch it "break up." When we reach down to pick up the pieces, our goal will not to put them back together as they were, but to transform them for the better.
I think that’s basically what I was slowly working towards. I worry about the possibility of self-congratulation while all that’s happened is that the binary has been reproduced on another level. That’s clearer in a case when non-binary genders are translated into binary terms (e.g., someone saying “gender A in their culture is like a combination of these qualities from gender 1 and these from gender 2 in our culture”), even if one does one’s best to respect non-binary identities by using the right terms and so on. I also wanted to explore just how non-binary some non-binary systems really are, though. For example, what defines a third gender? Even within a culture that explicitly has space for one, I can imagine a culture that would think of its third gender in terms of a combination of traits from the other two, in which case is the underlying logic still basically binary? That culture might well be a better place for people who would be considered gender-variant in a more dualistic system, but the third gender might still be defined comparatively narrowly depending on what goes into it.
In that light, I find the term “two-spirit” particularly intriguing. It’s not a concept that I’m very familiar with, so please forgive me if I inadvertently misrepresent it or accidentally say something offensive. I gather that in certain cultures the term is meant more or less literally, referring to people who have both a masculine and a feminine spirit. In those cases, is the masculine/feminine binary still at the root of those cultures’ gender systems? I gather that sometimes there were also expectations as to the assumption of roles understood as active/passive or as normally gendered among one-spirit people, if one can describe them as such, and that there are variations from culture to culture as to whether two-spirit people are understood to identify as a distinct third or other gender.
Closer to my cultural home, when we consider agender and genderfluid people, what genders do they not identify with and move fluidly between, respectively? Again, I can imagine that in some cases it might be a matter of identifying with neither or both of two genders.
I’m wondering about this as a strategic issue. On the one hand, I think the last example shows how some space might be opened up for other identities within systems in which “woman” and “man” are primary, say, but as you point out “woman-ness” and “man-ness” haven’t been shaken up that much in themselves, which leaves other problems to work out. On the other hand, I wonder if we can try to do two things at once, and see where we can open up gender knowing that some areas may take more time. I can only imagine the bemusement I would face if I stood on the street corner and just asked people what women and men “are,” really, or, Heaven forfend, if there really are women and men. (I’m not being entirely facetious – I would find it very useful to hear people’s ideas of what women and men are beyond the trivial statement that they are people recognized by themselves and others as women and men.) Exploring certain parameters of “woman-ness” and “man-ness” might be easier, even as we whittle away at what goes into those concepts.
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And more good breaking news! Governor Brewer made the right call and vetoed the Religious Freedom bill![...]If that awful bill had been signed into law, it would have made such an excellent wedge issue for the 2014 midterms. That injustice could have ignited the base while simultaneously winning over independents. Those are two things the Democrats will desperately need next November.
Emotionally, I'm glad what's-her-face vetoed it. Pragmatically, not so much.
I get what you mean—but pragmatically, wanting it to pass for a downstream political goal is throwing thousands of people under the bus for political points. It's our lives you're gambling with! Please keep that in mind before you regret too much that queer folks (and people perceived as queer) kept their right to, e.g., buy groceries, or call the loss of that right "excellent."
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As far as I can tell, "scientific realism" is neither. The process of science is based on examining reliably replicable data whose truth or falsity can be empirically determined. If this type of data is completely absent from a field of discussion, I can not realistically define it as science.
You seem to be laboring under the misunderstanding that scientific realism is supposed to be a replacement for science or a kind of science. That's not the case. It's a philosophic position about science. It shouldn't be defined as science because it isn't science.
Judging from your comments, you yourself are a scientific realist. You think that "scientific theory construction aims to give us a literally true story of what the world is like, and that acceptance of a scientific theory involves the belief that it is true". Or, as you put it, you think "the process of science is based on examining reliably replicable data whose truth or falsity can be empirically determined". I'm not sure why you're criticizing scientific realism.
That doesn't mean it isn't useful and educational to deconstruct gender roles and language on an academic level. However I am of the opinion that the people like Cori Marie who are getting their butts out there in the real world to fight for our rights are exponentially more useful and educational than any amount of high-end postmodern philosophical discourse that has a limited audience by its nature.It appears that you think "postmodern" academics aren't involved in any activism and only sit in ivory towers talking at each other. That's not the case. Consider, for example, the law professor and critical race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw:
Or consider the post-structuralist philosopher Judith Butler:A specialist on race and gender equality, she has facilitated workshops for human rights activists in Brazil and in India, and for constitutional court judges in South Africa. Her groundbreaking work on “Intersectionality” has traveled globally and was influential in the drafting of the equality clause in the South African Constitution. Crenshaw authored the background paper on Race and Gender Discrimination for the United Nation’s World Conference on Racism, served as the Rapporteur for the conference’s Expert Group on Gender and Race Discrimination, and coordinated NGO efforts to ensure the inclusion of gender in the WCAR Conference Declaration.
Crenshaw has worked extensively on a variety of issues pertaining to gender and race in the domestic arena including violence against women, structural racial inequality, and affirmative action. She has served as a member of the National Science Foundation’s committee to research violence against women and has consulted with leading foundations, social justice organizations and corporations to advance their race and gender equity initiatives.
In 1996, she co-founded the African American Policy Forum to house a variety of projects designed to deliver research-based strategies to better advance social inclusion. Among the Forum’s projects are the Affirmative Action Research and Policy Consortium and the Multiracial Literacy and Leadership Initiative. In partnership with the Aspen Roundtable for Community Change, Crenshaw facilitated workshops on racial equity for hundreds of community leaders and organizations throughout the country. With the support of the Rockefeller Foundation, Crenshaw facilitates the Bellagio Project, an international network of scholars working in the field of social inclusion from five continents. Currently, she serves as Committee Chair for the U.S.-Brazil Joint Action Plan to Promote Racial and Ethnic Equality, an initiative of the U.S. State Department. A founding member of the Women’s Media Initiative, Crenshaw writes for Ms. Magazine, the Nation and other print media, and has appeared as a regular commentator on “The Tavis Smiley Show,” NPR, and MSNBC.
Much of Butler's early political activism centered around queer and feminist issues, and she served, for a period of time, as the chair of the board of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. Over the years, she has been particularly active in the gay and lesbian rights, feminist, and anti-war movements. She has also written and spoken out on issues ranging from affirmative action and gay marriage to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the prisoners detained at Guantanamo Bay. More recently, she has been active in the Occupy movement and has publicly expressed support for a version of the 2005 BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaign against Israel.
On September 7, 2006, Butler participated in a faculty-organized teach-in against the 2006 Lebanon War at the University of California, Berkeley. Another widely publicized moment occurred in June 2010, when Butler refused the Civil Courage Award (Zivilcouragepreis) of the Christopher Street Day (CSD) Parade in Berlin, Germany at the award ceremony. She cited racist comments on the part of organizers and a general failure of CSD organizations to distance themselves from racism in general and from anti-Muslim excuses for war more specifically. Criticizing the event's commercialism, she went on to name several groups that she commended as stronger opponents of "homophobia, transphobia, sexism, racism, and militarism".
In October 2011, Butler attended Occupy Wall Street and, in reference to calls for clarification of the protesters' demands, she said: "People have asked, so what are the demands? What are the demands all of these people are making? Either they say there are no demands and that leaves your critics confused, or they say that the demands for social equality and economic justice are impossible demands. And the impossible demands, they say, are just not practical. If hope is an impossible demand, then we demand the impossible – that the right to shelter, food and employment are impossible demands, then we demand the impossible. If it is impossible to demand that those who profit from the recession redistribute their wealth and cease their greed, then yes, we demand the impossible."
She is currently an executive member of the Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace in the United States and The Jenin Theatre in Palestine.[52] She is also a member of the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace.
The criticisms you are pointing towards "postmodern" academia are the same anti-intellectual criticisms pointed towards academia in general. The idea that academics are useless and never engage with anything outside the ivory tower is a prevalent, though false, idea among the American public.
So, Citizen Laflamme, question:
I've been interested in intersectionality and critical race theory and all that other crap for a while, but I was wondering: how do Crenshaw and cothinkers qualify as postmodernist? Not that I really have much grounding in postmodernism, but I thought Critical Race theory was an outgrowth of Critical Theory which was an outgrowth of "Cultural Marxists" like Adorno and Marcuse? Or are they also considered postmodernists?
Postmodernism doesn't really mean anything. It's just a broadly applied word used to tar large swathes of intellectual traditions and paint them as the same thing. So critical race theory is postmodern (in the sense that the word "postmodern" has no doubt been used to describe it) but it also isn't postmodern (in the sense that calling something postmodern is pretty much meaningless). There's a reason I used scare quotes around "postmodern" in my previous post.
Well, then, as someone who doesn't spend much time tracking down the fine differences between Foucault and the Frankfurt school, would you say Critical Race theory owes more to the former or the latter? Or an amalgamation of the two?
I honestly don't know much about the genealogy of critical race theory. Sorry, I don't know the answer to your question.
Thank you.
I'll leave you with a Musical Interlude and then head back down to the OTD.