My struggle with gender, philosophy and feminism
During my army days I was fascinated in metaphysics. This is what sort of got me into mathematics and philosophy. They are really intertwind topics. However, I gradually shown interest in philosophy of gender.
I can think of multiple reasons for that:
On an analytic stand point, partially under the influence of daoism, the dualic image of things appealed to me. I’ve grown convinced in the idea that there are two negating views of the world and we must accet both as living beings. It was convenient, like many of the old world writers, to assign them to the concept of gender. Not as attached to sex. Human beings developed a lore under the concept of duality, and attached to sex the idea of gender which relates to this duality. The polar genders (and whats between them) seem engrained in many cultures and especially western lore, and it has influence on the way we preceive the world.
This sort of lead me to the second reason: While philosophy historically attempted to create an impersonal frame of mind, one of pure logos, being, godliness which would rationalize basically everything, there was also this frame which attempts to understand things from the personal, from context and from emotional connection to them.
And of course, the fact that I am transgender made me think about gender a lot. As I read more I realized how useful philosophy is to rationalize these thoughts. Being transgender is not only a personal emotion, it is highly rationally justified when you understand the analysis of language, culture etc.
Sidenote: no, philosophy doesn’t mean only ‘post modernism’ and def not ‘illogical’. I should write on the topic at some point, but most of my reading focused on the british or ‘analytic’ philosophy which really attempted to ground itself on mathematics (as the root of language) and science. At first, because like most of us, I believed in medicalism and biology as the root of all knowledge, evolutionary psychology and all, and then gradually discovered both from the empiric standpoint and the philosophical standpoint how unsound this position is, as I progressed through reading of the analytic tradition (and read my loverboy, Wittgy).
Anyway, back to present day Emma.
The Rowling incident resulted in a major split in the feminist movement in Israel. What happened basically was this: The Slut Walk in Israel started off by queer anarchists. One of its major leaders was a queer trans woman with a beard called Dan Vag. TERFs and liberal feminists really didn’t like the idea and put a lot of pressure and shaming against the Slut Walk.
Dan Vag committed suicide after this atrocies public shaming. Since she was a source of inspiration to the queer anarchists, her death broke the community down. The new leaders of the Slut Walk, or more specifically the Tel-Aviv Slut Walk were mostly cis women, both TERF and liberal (along side, began a mass marketing movement of the walk, a lot of social media coverage, association with major political figures and of course: capitalization from the walk by selling t shirts and merch).
The topic declined in the following years until Rowling raised her ugly head which raised the awareness that the feminist circles in Israel are not safe for trans and bisexual women. This brought a major split within the movement. The Slut Walk currently is much more gay (lead by a lesbian woman, open to trans people) and yet still very liberal (though not libertarian, they sided with the TERF circles).
Anyhow, thing is, that though trans were outcasted from feminist circles before, it was always more subtle and manipulative. The Rowling incident made everything louder and more exposed. Which is a good thing. It finally opened a discussion which should have occured years before. So... I guess... thank you Rowling for being such a dumb, vicious person.
Thing is, while there is much good intention, most of the discussions are made using Facebook which is sort of shit for discourse. I should note, we have many doctors and academics who were willing to take the time and write very serious posts about the matter (sadly no rational argument or post from any figure with knowledge supporting the TERF side, almost as though it is mostly a load of rubbish and they repeat the same dumb arguments over and over again), but seeing as though they are mostly posted in Facebook, most people don’t come to contact with the information and it is quickly forgotten. Plus, most of the discourse on Gender Theory within our circle remains very... undergrad and below level.
Enters ol’ narcissist me. People pushed me for some time, and I thought about it myself, of preparing a YouTube video about the topic. But I had two major issues:
A. I wished to cover the TERF side as unbiased and maturely as possible
B. I wished to bring something new and insighting to the table and not repeat the abundant information that is avaiable everywhere (which TERFs don’t seem to read or be able to understand God knows why).
Ben Shapiro’s gender video was just translated to Hebrew, and I prepared a script for it but I felt bad replying to such an idiot. While he argues similar things to many TERFs, I don’t see value in replying to them because none of his points holds up to scrutiny more then 5 sec.
I was actually insulted. They are willing to hold extremely lazy believes, that are so easy to debunk, and not think for even 5min about the people who are hurt by that. They are not the ones who are hurt by their views and I can see why thinking about these topics places them in inconvenience so I guess it doesn’t matter for them. You know... the banality of evil and all that.
But then I remembered I studied Deleuze during the last summer vacation, and I remember his view on Science in Desert Island which intrigued me, specifically with relation to intersex.
Specifically, the fact that science attempts to induct from cases to general theories, and then apply them to different phenomena, implies that science would attempt to enforce sameness and eliminate differences. Thus, for instance, by creating the binary presentation of sex, intersex become an anomaly for the theory, which is either ignored or regularly supposed to be contained in one of these two categories for convenience. Likewise, statements as 'Women have property X' don't fully describe which category has property X: people of similar sex hormones balance, people with a certain genetic markup, people with a female or male anatomy etc. Thus the description increases our underdeterminancy and raises the issue of under-diagnosis in trans and intersex people.
I also saw a rescent video which made me think about this issue further:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcOhfOrz0HM
And I had many thoughts:
It’s an interesting take on the issue, it can demonstrate many of the things people don’t understand about sex and gender in an easy to follow manner, Deleuze is a very sexy man and it would be a great opening video about the binary view on sex.
Anyhow, this got me excited.
I mailed a few of my professors, some professionals I know for Deleuze and stuff, one of them was even interested in making it a complete research with me about Deleuze and gender (apparently, not a topic discussed enough cause everyone is at the other party, parising Foucault for the same shit over and over again while forgetting that Deleuze guy who was a serious golden boy).
Anyhow, I’m excited about that.