I think that she thinks that transsexualism is generally ethically and politically acceptable.
So I don't think that she's like someone like Janice Raymond.
So I think that she would probably, I mean, endorse, then wants to endorse the consequence.
But I think that you're right, I think that you're right that if this, if then conditional,
a lot of people are going to go, well, this is, this is wrong.
And so this is wrong.
You're right, it does fire back.
If this conditional is right, you know, as they like to say one person's modus ponens is another person's modus tollens, right?
So we're talking about modus tollens and modus tollens.
All right.
Other comments about this?
I mean, I'm not sure.
So, I mean, in part, you know, kind of the abstraction from specific culture and specific history,
the main part would be one of the things problematic with this piece.
And you're also noticing that in the romance of the transgender native,
that there are similar worries about an abstraction from the specificities of cultural context.
And so you might add to that, and then to what extent does this play into an unspoken western vantage point?
Right, because I mean, it just seems like, I mean, that article talks about how a lot of these guys got it wrong.
And it does seem like they're having a really monetary concern, because they don't,
it's not really hardly any of those different, the Indian group, the Hawaiian, they weren't,
it wasn't so much about surgery or money.
It was about, you know, maybe performing, you know, or, you know, that kind of thing.
And so, that's not even relevant to my, you know, in those contexts, the monetary.
Good, okay, so anyway, one of the things that I am hopeful is that if you did notice a difference,
if you did think this piece seems different to me, it doesn't seem to fit in with the other pieces that we've looked at so far.
And if you felt like this piece felt more philosophical to me,
or more what I'm used to in terms of philosophy, then I'm really glad.
And I think that this is an important lesson and sort of underscores a really important point about what I'm trying to do in this seminar
and why what we're doing may feel a little bit alien.
Aside from the fact that many of you may not be used to some of the transitions that we're talking about,
is that I think that when you do philosophy with an eye to real-life oppression and resistance,
and you're theorizing in the face of that, that that is very different in nature from philosophizing of the type that you may be used to.
Whereas here's a philosophical problem that's explored.
Where it's philosophical exploration for the second philosophical exploration.
What we're doing here is not philosophical exploration for the second philosophical exploration.
For me, this philosophy is like a matter of life and death.
I mean, I'm being dramatic about it, but I do different things philosophically.
I do this stuff on gender, and I do stuff in the philosophy of George Barclay.
George Barclay, history of philosophy, good times.
And it's fun, but it's abstracted from anything that affects me and my friends,
and I live to basis.
But when I think about the trend stuff, it matters to me because I live the reality,
and friends of mine live the reality.
It matters in terms of an actual life. Does that make sense to you?
And I think that that feels very different in the kind of what the philosophy is doing is very different.
At least one hopes that it is.
Now, I'd argue minimally I think that this is true, I actually have a stronger view than this.
But I think that if you're going to philosophize gender,
you're going to do like feminist philosophy.
Or if you're going to do analytic, I'm sorry, if you're going to do anti-racist philosophy.
Or if you're going to do the gay and lesbian philosophy, sort of what?
If you're going to do that kind of philosophy, then I do feel that it had better bloody well being engaged.
It had better bloody well not be philosophy as usual.
Because if it's philosophy as usual, it's like, you know, thinking about a pretty problem by itself
with no libertarian inside or no resistant end in sight,
then I don't see the point in doing it and it seems that it could positively be harmful to me.
Does that make sense to you guys?
I have a stronger view.
Sorry for going off on this little tangent.
But I think that it's useful actually, I think that the overall piece kind of like brings out,
makes this sort of like little worth math worthwhile.
I actually do think that if you're doing philosophy in general, that it's worth raising.
Have you ever wondered why we do philosophy?
Like, what's the point?
I mean, you can be really curious.
I get turned on by really cool problems.
I get dragged into philosophical problems because they're cool.
But aside from that, aside from the coolness factor,
aside from just like getting shipped out by like philosophy, why develop your life to it?
Obviously, you have to be a pretty smart person to do philosophy
and to think about these hard issues.
But have you ever worried that maybe do you want to worry about artificial problems
or do you want to worry about problems that don't have attraction with the outside world in important ways?
What is it that you're doing otherwise?
I mean, I think that those are important questions to ask.
And I haven't necessarily argued one way or the other on that,
but I think that they're important questions to ask as philosophers.
That the possibility of going and sort of availing yourselves of medical technologies
because of that is not going to be what gives you a race change in the same way.
And in the case in which you're multi- or non-racial,
this is a consequence of, in part, genealogy.
And no surgery can change that.
You know what I mean?
And I think that that actually helps play into her idea that...
Okay, my brain meltdown.
It plays into her idea that these things are important and different.
Here's another way in which they're important and different.
And then I think that it's kind of interesting.
Is that it seems as if that is actually conceptually possible,
the way in which we conceive a race for race to be eliminated.
Like if everybody sort of reproduces everybody,
then at some point it's made me think that everybody would reach a kind of homely use point
where there wouldn't be a lot of visibly red.
And the notion of, you know, chasing your lineage, your ancestry
would become sort of irrelevant,
because everybody would be like a bunch of plants running around basically, right?
So races, we know, would then be gone.
But the way in which sex is conceptualized,
it doesn't seem as if by simply reproducing with everybody
that you're going to get rid of the sex differences.
So that's interesting.
So it actually seems, here is a way in which race seems,
well, last for cows to trim, then sex.
And that through simply reproducing with everybody
and not sort of sticking with any of this or that,
that the races we know could be eliminated,
that you can't do that in the case of sex, it seems.
It's interesting too, because even the fact that two-degree reproduction continues to happen,
I mean, it's almost predicated that there are two at least compatible humans that can make a baby, you know what I'm saying?
But where race then wouldn't, in fact,
because that's the thing between two different people,
from an appropriate aspect, I mean,
that they have to be a certain way in order to make another person.
But race-wise, it can really be variable on either one.
So I'm essentially to the point that it seems that would be a stronger characteristic
because of the interchangeability of each of the people in the appropriate act.
That's just how I felt about it.
It's really, it's a good point.
But I guess one of the responses I think that he would agree with that.
I didn't think that.
The gender and sex thing is actually,
those kind of work really different from race and race,
but I don't think she's saying that it's a stronger character.
I don't think she's saying that it's a strong characteristic.
I think that she would agree to sort of the example that I just gave, maybe,
in which case it seems like sex is a stronger character.
Oh, no, that's what I was saying.
The sex gender is stronger, not race so much.
I don't think that she thinks one or the other is stronger.
What I think that she thinks is that because of these disanalogies, you can't...
So let's go back to this idea of race change.
She thinks that there's a whole sort of ethical issues that connect to changing race,
issues of being true to your group or authentic, issues around solidarity and so forth.
She thinks that one of the reasons that this arises is precisely because
race is so thoroughly connected with ancestry, with heredity.
So if that's right, then you can't go in, as it were, to a surgeon and get your parents changed.
There's no surgical procedure available for that.
And so what I think she's saying is that this is one of the reasons
that we understand the history of race and its connection to ancestry.
It becomes clear why this notion of surgical racial transformation isn't going to work in the same way.
Because you're not going to be able to change your lineage,
which has been such a long connection to race.
The interesting thing, though, in the analogy, like I am a race change,
I'm saying that my parents, in a sense, with my dad, Japanese family, my mom,
my wife and Western family, this is almost like a new...
I can't change my parents, but they changed there.
It doesn't make any sense.
No, no, that doesn't make sense.
But the way in which it changes is different.
Don't go wrong.
Bless you, one day.
So one of the things that Hayes has in mind are these comments from Raymond, for example,
where she says, in the case of trans...
So we have transsexuality as a phenomenon.
Why don't we have transracialism?
Why don't we have it in the same way?
And one of Hayes' things is that...
Well, we kind of do, actually.
Bless you.
I have these technologies that allow for alteration in the presentation with the body,
you know, surgeries on eyes, hair straightening and stuff like that,
and people do avail themselves of those technologies.
They claim that there are no transracialists.
It's a little bit deceptive, actually, she thinks.
But if you consider Raymond's argument, it goes like this,
sort of like, well, there are no transracialists
because racialized people, you know, for example,
realize that the problem is not with their bodies,
the problem is with the culture,
and it's the culture that's the process of the needs changing.
So transsexuality is then represented as something that is politically suspect or problematic.
Because we have this case of, well, what these folks should do is recognize that it's not...
There's sex, it's the problem, it's the culture that's the problem,
it's the culture that needs changing, right?
All they're doing is they're playing into the existing culture by conforming to these particular demands.
So Raymond deploys it as a way of raising questions about the motivations of trans folk
for appealing to these surgeries.
It makes it seem as if it's tantamount to a decision to pass racially.
So Hayes wants to address this and she wants to raise worries about those types of moves
where you're going to move easily from one to the other
and draw ethical or political consequences in doing so.
Hayes overall does something similar but basically in the other direction.
So Hayes' general idea is that when we look at these ethical or political questions,
we try to draw political or ethical consequences.
So let's bring it back to Richard's point.
It's true that we can draw this analogy of passing the two cases.
So the M to F and the white person who attempts to pass as black.
In both cases there's going to have to be attempts to cover one's history and so forth.
So you have that analogy.
But you also have disanalogies.
So at this point I would say you've established that much of an analogy of what exactly does that show.
Are you trying to draw any kind of political consequences from it?
Yeah, a political verdict, a political lesson.
If we accept, for example, that in the case of the M to F and the white individual who tries to pass as black,
so there's an analogy and they both need to make claims about their past in different ways.
What is the lesson?
Sorry, I have a habit of just attacking arguments sometimes.
And I was just attacking to set up the fact that histories matter in that.
And she tried to distinguish it because one is a different type of oppression while the other is kind of tied together.
Well they're similar in that respect so you're going to get, I mean I don't think that she doesn't think that there's no similarities,
but she also thinks that there's differences.
And the question is whether or not you can assume an analogy for the purposes of drawing political lessons.
Does that make sense?
So one difference in these two cases is that, do you guys remember the film Tropical Thunder?
There was this whole issue of Robert Downey Jr. passing as a black guy.
I did not go to see that film. I chose not to. It politically disturbed me.
And other friends of mine chose not to see it also because it politically disturbed them.
I'm not saying this decision was the right decision or the wrong decision.
I just want to say why it politically disturbed me is because there was a whole history of blackface.
Of white men putting on black makeup and that putting on a black makeup was very much connected to a racist past.
And so knowing that history, I felt uncomfortable with what was happening in the film in light of that practice.
And I think that it's controversial and I can understand why some people might think that we're now in a position of culture where we've escaped that past.
And that film, what it did didn't necessarily, that it subverted that past or that it challenged it in some ways.
I think that that could be right.
But I guess I would argue that we live in a culture in which the end work continues to be fraud.
I mean, the history of that work hasn't gone away.
I dare say I find it hard to believe that the history of blackface could have gone so easily away.
But what is my point?
My point is that, so when you have the white guy passing as a black guy, right,
I think that this brings in a whole other consideration, sort of the racial history of blackface.
And I think that if you drop that out, right, that you would not get a full sort of assessment of what exactly was going on there.
Does that make sense?
And I think that it sort of showed in the fact that we actually had the movie Tropic Thunder that some people, including myself, felt uncomfortable going to see it.
Whereas I wouldn't feel uncomfortable going to see Chee Wong Fu or things for whatever.
All those things.
I might have problems with those for other reasons, from a trans point of view.
But not for this specific.
Does that make sense to you guys?
Yeah, so that's one thing. So when you start looking at these, so here's another thing, is that this is what Hayes would say.
This is a point that Hayes would press, or one of the points that she would press.
Is that because the social way in which race has been constructed historically has been such that it's been very much determined by ancestries,
but determined by things like the one dropped rule.
So do you have any kind of black blood in you?
So we have this person who was born white, and they had all white parents in a white ancestry.
And they have, say, surgery to change their face, their skin and everything.
It's not clear. So Hayes is going to say, people are going to say, you're not really black.
You're not really black because you had two Caucasian parents.
And they had Caucasian parents and so on and so on, or something like that.
So race doesn't work that way.
You can't actually, so you have no sort of, as it were, foot or leg to stand on.
Whereas it looks like, in the case of sex, one sex is not determined on the basis of ancestry.
I'm not female because my mom was female.
It's determined in other ways that I have more to do with the individual alone.
And because sex has more to do with the individual alone, that's one of the reasons why there may be a context in which it can medically change.
Does that make sense?
Reading this, I thought that, because it's about a sort of major reaction from,
and I was thinking, I was sounding like, last week's hard.
The really, with the first thing that, you know, you don't know what it's like to be a woman.
You don't have this history.
And so, sounding like that, and then, because I'm kind of resistant,
in a certain way, like, well, I mean, if you're passing, can you say that you're actually participating in that history?
But then on this side, it seems like there's a lot to that.
There's a kind of one-drop route, that essentially there's a tainting idea, right?
You've been tainted with, you know, and, because I was thinking, like, if you say conversion with race,
you're, like, reducing it to maybe color, or, and I'm like, I was thinking about, like, standing in front of the mirror,
and I'm, like, white.
I mean, we, I mean, there's features that come with it, right?
And that has something, the aesthetic features, has, I mean, that, you know,
there's questions about whether, you know, how black students vote as beauty.
What's the statement, right?
And so there's a lot to come with, right?
It excludes you from all kinds of opportunities, you might be a good actor, right?
Or, so I, I don't know, that put me in an interesting position,
because I felt like I sound like the really, I forgot the article last week, you know, the, with the,
Raymond?
Yeah, that's right.
Where we had the, you know, exclusion from the festival and this kind of, yeah, yeah.
Well, there's different things going on there.
One is sort of this idea of experience and refraction.
And does experience and refraction make you legit, and to what degree is it make you legit?
In terms of these sort of notions of authentic race.
And then there's other issues that Hayes is getting at, to what degree,
one of the other features by which race is culturally laid down.
So one of the ways in which race is culturally laid down is on the basis of, you know,
ancestry, right?
And stuff like the one-drop rule.
That has little to do with, you know, experience of oppression.
So for example, you know, by the one-drop loop, one-drop rule, you know,
you could have lived your life full of, like, white privilege,
had no sort of experience with racial oppression until one day it was determined that,
oh, you know, you're great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great,
great, you know, someone was black, so you're black.
And then suddenly, you know, you've experienced racial oppression, right?
That would be sort of a different thing, right?
So there are different things that are with each other.
One is sort of this actual experience with the oppression.
And two is the way in which racial categories are attributed to people
and what basis are they attributed to people and what are the systems by which they are attributed to people.
Does that make sense?
I think that one-drop rule, my great-grandmother, is like, um, something like that.
So it's like, well, what's that?
I think I'm black.
Oh, like, I don't know.
Well, just using what you just said about one-drop rule,
that becomes sort of interesting then,
because then you can then make an analogy toward a trans situation.
So, one would assume that if you have one drop of blood from a different race,
you probably don't look any different than you did if you had no drops of blood from another race, right?
So, um, you're not going to experience oppression after being told that this happens, right?
Unless somebody finds out, like, the secret about you, right?
But basically, you'll pass to go through your entire, I mean, pass as if there's whatever.
And you go through your entire life unless somebody discloses this truth about you to an employer
or to a potential spouse or something like that, right?
Um, and the case could be made that with, with, uh, sort of passing privilege into trans contents,
it's the same thing, right?
Um, unless somebody finds out, then you could easily go through your life
without ever having, uh, experiencing any sort of, uh, oppression based on, on a trans status, right?
Somebody would have to know what to find out.
So, there is an analogy there.
Right, but that's not an analogy of, um,
changing race through technological interventions.
Do you think what these folks are interested in?
Correct.
Right.
But I actually think, um, that there are some interesting issues there that need to be explored.
I want to come back to talk about them in a bit.
