Critical discussion being shut down or violence?

Philosophy is bs by bs ers. So anything is ok and everything is irrelevant. 

But it certainly is a topic worthy of discussion by real professions like psychiatry. 


My thought is why did @h4daniel title this thread "Critical discussion being shut down or violence?" when the article you linked to is titled: "A Defense of ‘Transracial’ Identity Roils Philosophy World"? What does this have to do with violence?? And the critical discussions appear to be occurring. 

All that being said, people can change the groups they identify (and others identify them) with. However, what one cannot change is their own history. To be 'trans' implies that one changed from something else. 

In  a previous thread on the topic, I provided the example of the Trans-religious: For example, a convert to Judaism cannot pretend to have a historical connection to the Holocaust or pretend to have experienced antisemitism in their youth.

A primary issue with the Rachel Dolezal NAACP shocker was that she did *not* identify as trans-racial. She pretended she had parents who were not her parents... and pretended she had a history that was not her history. That is not 'Trans'... that is a purposeful deceit that she used in an opportunistic way to gain and maintain employment.

 


Sprout one of the rebuttals to her article from a fellow academic used the word violence over and over again,this article was causing violence. Sorry I am running out, so I will look for it and post it. I agree without this article, one will have no idea about what I am referencing. 

To me, philosophy is about discussion.

The author of the article brought up the fact that if we looked at a genetic analysis of a person, we most often would find quite a mix, thus a process of identification occurs, not pure biology.  I think we are talking about biology in both circumstances, and when biology conflicts with a person's inner identity. How do we define gender or race? Social construction or biology? Does a body part define gender? Clothes, heels,posture, gestures, make-up - all these social constructs? Does skin color define race? The way one speaks, moves?  Is race treated differently than sex?   


FWIW: The only reference I found when I did a search for "violence" in the article was this reference to a Facebook post:

To Ms. Tuvel’s critics, the paper, despite her declarations of support for transgender rights, contained “egregious levels of liberal white ignorance and discursive transmisogynistic violence,” as one scholar put it on Facebook.


Gilgul said:

Philosophy is bs by bs ers. So anything is ok and everything is irrelevant. 

But it certainly is a topic worthy of discussion by real professions like psychiatry. 

"Psychiatry is a racket for the Jews".

Tony Soprano's mother

OTOH:

https://www.brainyquote.com/qu...




sprout said:



A primary issue with the Rachel Dolezal NAACP shocker was that she did *not* identify as trans-racial. She pretended she had parents who were not her parents... and pretended she had a history that was not her history. That is not 'Trans'... that is a purposeful deceit that she used in an opportunistic way to gain and maintain employment.

 

Devil's advocate:  She is currently unemployed and is relying on food stamps, yet has not changed her identity back to a white woman.  This does seem like more than changing her appearance in order to get a job.


Whites have appropriated Af Am culture throughout U.S. history. It could be argued that the only true American arts derive from Af Ams. Appropriating actual racial identity is the topping on the cake. 

Remember "Wiggers" during the 80s-90s - white kids adopting hip hop culture.


It's an interesting idea. Since race doesn't exist as a biological truth, there's no real reason to prevent anyone from identifying with any race they choose.


But the use of the word violence in the thread title is quite inappropriate.


Not having read the paper (and I doubt I could make any sense of it anyway. Not when people involved in the issue say things like  "discursive transmisogynistic violence". what the hell does that mean?)

But I'm not sure why the author had to use transgenderism as a starting off point. The mere fact that race is such an amorphous and ill-defined quality should be enough to support the idea of transracialism.


One argument against her claim is that she grew up with white privilege so she doesn't know what it is really like to be black. However, that same argument could be used for anyone who grew up outwardly male (and therefore experienced male privilege) and then came out as a transgender woman later in life.


When ever anyone uses ( insert whatever ) privilege the statement can be classified as total bs and written off as a modern absurdity. 



spontaneous said:



sprout said:



A primary issue with the Rachel Dolezal NAACP shocker was that she did *not* identify as trans-racial. She pretended she had parents who were not her parents... and pretended she had a history that was not her history. That is not 'Trans'... that is a purposeful deceit that she used in an opportunistic way to gain and maintain employment.

 

Devil's advocate:  She is currently unemployed and is relying on food stamps, yet has not changed her identity back to a white woman.  This does seem like more than changing her appearance in order to get a job.

You are misunderstanding . I'm not saying that she *can't* identify as trans-racial. I think "trans-racial" can exist, and will bring along with it additional discussions of 'what it means to identify with a certain race'. 

But what she should not do is lie about her history, and who her parents are, to create the illusion that she was born Black.



sprout said:




But what she should not do is lie about her history, and who her parents are, to create the illusion that she was born Black.

I absolutely agree with you on that.  My comment was only in regards to the idea that she did this to get a job.



Gilgul said:

When ever anyone uses ( insert whatever ) privilege the statement can be classified as total bs and written off as a modern absurdity. 

There's a privileged attitude if I ever read one.


yea, because we all know that privilege, like racism, does not exist.

Gilgul said:

When ever anyone uses ( insert whatever ) privilege the statement can be classified as total bs and written off as a modern absurdity. 



Being born Black kind of makes the whole discussion moot. I didn't realize she claimed Black ancestry (yeah, Define that. )

In which case the whole thing is a bit silly, unless she is saying that her personal circumstance is not relevant to  the discussion she wishes to have.

sprout said:



spontaneous said:



sprout said:



A primary issue with the Rachel Dolezal NAACP shocker was that she did *not* identify as trans-racial. She pretended she had parents who were not her parents... and pretended she had a history that was not her history. That is not 'Trans'... that is a purposeful deceit that she used in an opportunistic way to gain and maintain employment.

 

Devil's advocate:  She is currently unemployed and is relying on food stamps, yet has not changed her identity back to a white woman.  This does seem like more than changing her appearance in order to get a job.

You are misunderstanding . I'm not saying that she *can't* identify as trans-racial. I think "trans-racial" can exist, and will bring along with it additional discussions of 'what it means to identify with a certain race'. 

But what she should not do is lie about her history, and who her parents are, to create the illusion that she was born Black.



Oy

sac said:



Gilgul said:

When ever anyone uses ( insert whatever ) privilege the statement can be classified as total bs and written off as a modern absurdity. 

There's a privileged attitude if I ever read one.



@spontaneous

To clarify, I agree: I don't think she took on a Black identity for the sole purpose of getting the NAACP position.

An interesting read on her is here:

http://www.thestranger.com/fea...

This is a far more thought-provoking article than the one in the NY Times. For example, while transgender can go in either direction, can transracial identity only go from White to Black?:

I ask her some easy questions, but she answers them with increasing irritation. When we have been together for three hours, I feel it's time to ask The Question.
It's the same question that other black interviewers have asked her. A question she seems to deeply dislike—so much so that she complains about the question in her book. But even in the book, it's not a question she actually answers: How is her racial fluidity anything more than a function of her privilege as a white person?
If Dolezal's identity only helps other people born white become black while still shielding them from the majority of the oppression of visible blackness, and does nothing to help those born black become white—how is this not just more white privilege?


And how Rachel Dolezal's actions demonstrate white privilege: 

For a white woman who had grown up with only a few magazines of stylized images of blackness to imagine herself into a real-life black identity without any lived black experience, to turn herself into a black history professor without a history degree, to place herself at the forefront of local black society that she had adopted less than a decade earlier, all while seeming to claim to do it better and more authentically than any black person who would dare challenge her—well, it's the ultimate "you can be anything" success story of white America. Another branch of manifest destiny. No wonder America couldn't get enough of the Dolezal story.
Perhaps it really was that simple. I couldn't escape Rachel Dolezal because I can't escape white supremacy. And it is white supremacy that told an unhappy and outcast white woman that black identity was hers for the taking.

Whether this is a questionable piece of "scholarship" as well as the feasibility of the concept of transracial identity are both subject to reasonable debate in academia.  That is the tradition of scholarly inquiry and the very rationale for academic freedom.  To call for the article to be removed from the journal (particularly one that has the social agenda and tradition of Hypatia) or to contend the editors should apologize for its inclusion because it violates someone's sense of what is acceptable for discussion is intellectually vapid censorship.  Apparently, the author sought only to facilitate a conversation about the possibility of transracial identity.  In the abstract, the author wrote:  

"My concern in this article is less with the veracity of Dolezal's claims, and more with the arguments for and against transracialism. In exploring these arguments, I follow transgender theorist Susan Stryker's call for those of us thinking through the Jenner–Dolezal comparison to “hold open a space for real intellectual curiosity, for investigations that deepen our understanding of how identity claims and processes function, rather than rushing to offer well-formed opinions based on what we already think we know” 

One of the key concerns about the article is the author's suggestion that someone makes "decisions" about their identity as opposed to identity being an innate characteristic that naturally emerges. Fine....so critique that point, challenge it, and offer alternative evidence....don't endorse intellectual oppression because you don't like something.  

In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) removed the diagnosis of “homosexuality” from the second edition of the DSM largely because of the debate that was precipitated by published competing theories, those that pathologized homosexuality and those that viewed it as normal. Had competing "theories" that contended homosexuality was not a pathology been banned from the journals, we might still be viewing being gay as a serious mental disorder.  

 


This is the song Common People by Pulp, but replace "being poor" with "being black".


I'm curious as to why Rachel Dolezal receives so much hate while the story of Iron Eyes Cody (born Espera Oscar de Corti) is seen more in the light of "you'll never believe this."  And he most certainly DID do it to get a job. It isn't as though Native Americans haven't been oppressed, so the claim can't be made that he wasn't appropriating the culture of an oppressed people like she was.  And he didn't just play the part while keeping quiet on his past, he also repeatedly claimed ancestry that he did not have.


Wow! Central casting strikes again!


Interesting point!!

spontaneous said:

I'm curious as to why Rachel Dolezal receives so much hate while the story of Iron Eyes Cody (born Espera Oscar de Corti) is seen more in the light of "you'll never believe this."  And he most certainly DID do it to get a job. It isn't as though Native Americans haven't been oppressed, so the claim can't be made that he wasn't appropriating the culture of an oppressed people like she was.  And he didn't just play the part while keeping quiet on his past, he also repeatedly claimed ancestry that he did not have.



And Elizabeth Warren


It's because you're only reading White-people media.

Start here:

http://lastrealindians.com/we-...

Either way, mis-appropriation of Natives is nothing new, there is never national shock over it. In fact people are shocked at us when we get mad at people portraying to be us. It happens on a daily basis to us. Our heritage is by our ancestry, not because we want to suffer or be victims. Our ancestry is documented and Native Americans are the only ones who can tell you their family tree going over a hundred years back. We have to because of the rights set in place by our treaties. This is why we must continue the fight for our treaty rights, so no one can claim what is rightfully ours. It is not called being selfish, it is hanging onto what we have left in a government that took everything else from us. Stole everything from us. So when we are upset by false claims of our culture, it is because it is all we have left.
See in Indian Country, it was never called “transracial”, we call it “wannabe”



Can you provide me with a list of that White-people media?

Do you think that MOL qualifies as part of the aforementioned group?


sprout said:

It's because you're only reading White-people media.

Start here:

http://lastrealindians.com/we-...


Either way, mis-appropriation of Natives is nothing new, there is never national shock over it. In fact people are shocked at us when we get mad at people portraying to be us. It happens on a daily basis to us. Our heritage is by our ancestry, not because we want to suffer or be victims. Our ancestry is documented and Native Americans are the only ones who can tell you their family tree going over a hundred years back. We have to because of the rights set in place by our treaties. This is why we must continue the fight for our treaty rights, so no one can claim what is rightfully ours. It is not called being selfish, it is hanging onto what we have left in a government that took everything else from us. Stole everything from us. So when we are upset by false claims of our culture, it is because it is all we have left.
See in Indian Country, it was never called “transracial”, we call it “wannabe”



1. No.

2. MOL isn't what I would call 'media' -- It's a discussion board.


Sprout here is the piece of writing that uses violence often - https://gendertrender.wordpres...

One quote - "White women enacting violence against women of color is not the exception; it is the rule.
Cis white women need to deeply reflect on the ways we constantly create and maintain unsafe spaces for those who are already marginalized and subject to violence in our discipline. We need to recognize that we are often not competent or qualified to do the work that we arrogantly take ourselves to be capable of. " 

I have problems with the use of the word violence, a way to shut down conversation. Intellectual fragility and tyranny. Competent rebuttals are needed, not barbs that shut down conversation. 


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