What I want to do now is get into convenience.
All right, I hope I don't go over.
Sorry, I guess I'll just go fast.
And if at any time, like everyone has been saying,
if you want to jump in, go for you to jump in.
All right, well, in the peace,
in the peace, transgendering of politics of recognition,
discrimination and violence targeted at transgender groups
is most often accompanied by injustices
along racial or ethnic violence.
The commerce of this reality is also true
in that racial discrimination is regularly presented
alongside enforced gender roles and boundaries.
The intersectionality of these two phenomena,
though not altogether positive, as we'll get to,
does much direct us towards a critical concept
of multiculturalism which, as Wong says,
if adopted by Western society could prove capable
of ensuring justice for all within liberal democracies.
By initially describing recognition,
it's vital in application to both racial and transgender struggles
when Wong further,
well, moves further to detail the parallel themes
inherent in each issue.
And he starts out by talking about what recognition is
and, well, it's important.
I mean, recognition is, it's not really quantifiable
in terms of when you just think about it initially,
but one you'd only view the conditions surrounding its absence
to identify its universal importance for everyone.
Modern Western society can be characterized
by a naive and ignorant assumption of justice
built erroneously upon euphemisms such as
for the greater good and the so-called needs
of the many outweigh those of the few.
However, when we analyze what justice truly constitutes,
we come to the realization that, as John Rawls described,
each person possesses an inviolability
founded on justice that even the welfare of society
cannot override.
For this reason, justice denies that the loss of freedom
for some is made right by a greater good shared by others.
It does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few
are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages
enjoyed by the many.
Which, I mean, when I first, I mean, I can't help but think
that we're kind of just programmed to assume,
I mean, when you're part of the dominant culture
and you don't realize it, I mean, how the recognition is kind of,
and it comes into effect that I'm white as well,
plays into it, you really just take for granted
your acceptability and dominance when it comes to
life that just doesn't seem so bad and, you know,
we'll get to, you know, the ideas of, like, people kind of
deserve it and they take what they get
because of the decisions that they make and, you know,
most people don't make these decisions,
so, well, you know, why mess it up for everyone
when there's only, like, a few mavericks?
Holding fast to this understanding of justice,
we can progress towards a politics of recognition
that addresses both the discrimination targeted against gender
and towards racial differences.
But before we are capable of constructing this,
often presumed utopian idea,
we must delve into the connections between trans
and ethnic hatred slash phobia in order to identify
how impressive forces enact their biases and bigotry
and eventually to assert the legitimacy
of transgender identities.
However, this is not to say that one need
to ignore the complexities of various forms of injustice
directed at ethnic groups or trans groups
as this risks omitting substantial cultural
and economic realities that help to shape identities themselves.
To begin, Huang insists that a policy of recognition
consists of more than just a dissemination
of positive images for a group.
Conventional thinking of rights and equality
cannot simply assimilate trans persons into the discussion
as its very basis was established with their exclusion.
So, you can't just simply put, we as a society
cannot merely put, like, a little smiley face bandage
over trans issues and then just walk away.
Saying, oh, well, we kind of developed, you know,
our idea of recognition with trans people
kind of on the outside, and now we can't just say,
oh, well now they're a part of it because,
well, the establishment wouldn't, it just doesn't agree.
As Charles Taylor observes, recognition is the basics
of how values attributed to persons and groups.
One would hope that such a principle would attribute
value to individuals based upon their humanists alone
and not by superficial, exterior conditions
of social status or wealth.
Not that the goal of recognition is to homogenize diversity,
but rather that the use of race, sexuality,
or gender as a basis for inequality should be illegitimate.
Equal valuation is therefore the basis
for a democratic system of politics and rights.
Huang then turns to the historic case
of Brown versus Board of Education
to highlight the critical nature of both
an attention to material conditions of inequality
and the semiotics of inequality.
Charles Lawrence goes on to argue that the ruling of Brown
not only concerns itself with the rights
of black children to equal education,
but it also described the systems of signification
that sanction white racial supremacy.
It held that segregated schools were unconstitutional,
not just because of, well, just an inequality
in terms of resources and the like,
but in their conveying of the message
that black children are, quote,
unconstitutional caste and unfit to be educated
with white children.
This discrimination present in this instance
was not born of a single form,
but rather was a product of what Huang refers
to as a constellation of social forces,
and he used that term several times later.
To better understand how these constellations operate,
he mentions the really cringeworthy concept
of intersectionality.
Instances of injustice are not solely racial,
economic, or gendered in their nature,
quote, long, analytically distinctive structures
of oppression and privilege can manifest
in practice simultaneously in complex patterns
of collusion and antagonism.
This intersectionality bears further implications
and that particular constellations of discrimination
result in unique types of violence.
Specific acts of violence may often prove linked
by what Sumi Keicho describes as a synergism
that results when sexualized racial stereotypes
combine racialized gender stereotypes.
Finally, there is no one specific form
of discrimination that is the root cause
or that demands more urgent attention
than the rest.
I'm kind of just trying to brush over all this
because this is really long.
Long moves on to the issues surrounding
S in the subject of Patricia Williams' work,
The Alchemy of Race and Rights.
S is a white transsexual woman
who was denied access to, well,
came to her basically because as a black woman
she figured that she was going to be,
I'd say, more capable or more understanding
in terms of the plight that she was facing.
We'll see the consequences of that.
But S was basically denied as a transsexual woman.
I think this was pre-op.
Denied access to both the women's bathroom
and the men's bathroom,
as well as the progression of the dean.
She turned to Williams for advice
and she was black and presumably more understanding.
By thinking of the bathrooms as an extension
of their personhood,
S's fellow students established themselves
as the victims, which is ridiculous,
by viewing those spaces as ones requiring
a constant patrolling of sex definition.
Quote, in the transphobic imagination,
the bathroom becomes the extension
of genital narcissism.
Or, how I define my body
is how all of this should define theirs.
However, the fact that S is white
complicates the transphobic encounter.
This leads to Williams's three levels of
complication between the issues of racism
and transphobia.
Neither emanate from the same historical space,
i.e. non-trans people who would
oppose racial restrictions to the restroom,
may find it appropriate
to exclude others over gender expression.
Additionally, the privileges of whiteness.
Additionally, the privileges of whiteness
within predominantly white institutions
allows for the taking for granted of inclusion,
which is what I mentioned earlier.
Also, by attributing the plight of S
to that of black individuals,
works to minimalize the latter
as mere victims while their
racial identity is enlisted into
S's search for legitimacy.
Now, a connection does exist, though,
in that S's experience was a sort of
Jim Crow mentality applied to gender
as male, female, black, and white
are all properties similar to
the busses, neighborhoods, etc.
that provide for, quote,
the extra corporeal background
of their expression.
S's experience
is a reminder of how property
is merely the mind's enhancement
of the limitations of the body.
I found that interesting.
Those around S gave her the status
of a non-person by claiming ownership
of gendered identities.
Her connection to Williams
extends out of the understanding
that ideologies of segregation
work through both material and symbolic exclusions,
looking at more nuanced analyses
of differences within the trans community itself.
And that goes
into the differences between
F to M versus MTF
differences in scrutiny and risk.
For instance,
looking at S's
situation as an example,
an F to M might receive less scrutiny
just based upon how men tend to be,
but they will be at more risk
of getting caught, and the
outcome could be much worse
in terms of harm,
whereas an M to F
might receive more scrutiny
in terms of using
the female restroom.
However, there's less
chance of harm generally
if they were caught.
Okay?
And as C. Jacob Hale argues,
the proliferation of these nuanced differences
is phenomenologically real
rather than mere moments of cultural confusion
to Wong.
What is critical is that no single type
of gender policing is exemplary
of all forms, and these multiple
experiences of said policing function
as preludes to the denial of recognition.
Wong then turns
to two specific incidents connected
by the acts of injustice predicated
on the gross refusals of
civil and human recognition.
And that gets into the
unnecessary deaths of Tyra Hunter
and Vincent Chin.
Tyra Hunter
On August 7, 1995,
Tyra Hunter, a black French dinner woman,
was struck by a car. As emergency
medical technician at the scene began to administer aid,
he suddenly explained, this bitch ain't no girl,
it's a nigger, he's got a dick,
and walked away. When this is later reported
that while Hunter was possibly so conscious,
the EMT stood laughing and telling jokes
with his fellow technicians for several minutes.
Tyra Hunter would subsequently die
of her injuries at Washington DC General Hospital.
On June 19, 1982,
Vincent Chin,
a non-francgender Chinese American,
was clubbed to death by Ronald Evans
and his stepson, Michael Mitz.
In a national local atmosphere poisoned by the media's
heavy-handed Japan-blast
bashing, Chin's attackers
blamed him for taking away American jobs.
Both of them were charged with
manslaughter and released on probation
with a $3,000 fine.
Wayne County Circuit Court Chief Justice
Charles Kaufman defended his light-sensing
by noting that,
we're talking here about a man who's held down
a responsible job with the same company
for 17 or 18 years,
and his son who is employed and a part-time student.
These men are not going to go out
and harm somebody else.
I just didn't think that putting them in prison
would do any good for them or for society.
If you don't make the punishment
fit the crime, you make the punishment
fit the individual.
Okay.
The unnecessary deaths
of both Tyra Hunter and Vincent Chin
provide views into the arrogance, racism,
homophobia, transphobia, and other forms
of ignorance present throughout the vastness
of white Western dominance.
Even though the bulk of hate crimes are not
committed by hate groups, acts such as these
are nonetheless attempts to bring
two-fruitioned beliefs in transgender deviance
and white supremacy.
Now,
how are there points to
reference the term in the first instance
with Tyra Hunter? The term bitch
marks hostility towards women
as a whole.
This colluded with
Tyra Hunter's failure in his eyes
to meet his sexualized
and gender expectations of a black woman.
Misogyny,
racism, homophobia, and transphobia
all simultaneously
were audible in the EMT statement
when he called Hunter
an it.
In that case, he rendered her socially dead
in that she was lying
and dying on the ground, but treated
as if she were already dead.
And callousness and arrogance is not
incidental, and it arises from the
implicit belief that they, the EMTs,
possess the right to either withhold
or grant recognition in the form of medical
care according to racial, gender,
and sexual criteria.
In the second instance, Kaufman,
the circuit court judge,
has arrogance in his sentencing
absolving Shin's attackers of their violent
racism, because they were
responsible family men.
He imagines
Kaufman imagines himself defender
of well-employed, heterosexual
heads of households,
whose personal well-being and society
and society's welfare are imagined
to be one in the same.
Putting them in prison would be
good for society.
Kaufman
and
and the discourse that he played,
Shin, who was also employed
and was engaged at the time, has no standing
as a man. His identity
is completely thrown out.
His identity is a man,
identity is a worker, or a proper
heterosexual, no less.
There's no clear reason why
another attack on Asian Americans
would not occur.
However, Kaufman just dismisses
their entire community in one fell swoop
with the terms of somebody else.
And these two
instances are connected
through the enactment of an exclusionary
and simultaneously
policing of race, gender, and sexuality,
in that both the circuit court judge
and EMTs assume
that they possess the right,
so to speak, of determining
what was legitimate
in the eyes of society and what
isn't, and the fact that
their entire hundred-and-fifth gin fell
outside of their concepts
or determinations, they
were victims of injustice,
quite clearly.
Yeah, and then
the thing is, is like, even though
the bulk of these hate crimes,
as these two are, are not
committed by big groups
or hate groups themselves, these
acts attempt, you know,
to turn beliefs that we all have
transgender, deviance, or white
connections, and we all, but
society, general society, has
transgender, deviance, or white supremacy
into concrete realities.
Now, the
long goes on to talk about the different
sorts of legacies.
How am I doing on time?
I'm good, okay.
That entire hundred are possibly
a consequence of 19th century
construction of womanhood
as whites and domesticate,
politically centered.
Which in contrast with
Paris's quote
where
black women function as
important regulatory symbols
by representing everything that woman was not.
Indeed, through the rigid construction
of the virgin horde dichotomy along racial lines,
the conception of womanhood was deeply
wedded to slavery and patriarchy,
and the conduct of all women was
policed in accordance with patriarchal norms
of white male power.
In Jen's case,
Asian Americans were pointed out as
like Asians
are seen as perpetual foreigners
whose presence in the US
is seen as being transitory
or even parasitical.
And these are just
you know, two examples of the stereotypes
that the white male dominance
exudes on a regular basis.
The EMTs regard for
you know, Tyra and Coffin's claim
of white male value
both echo historically enduring hierarchies
of racial, gender, and sexuality
within, you know, white culture.
Now,
the difference,
then it goes on to the difference between
a politics of recognition
and economic or redistributive justice.
The severe economic vulnerability
of trans people both allows for abuse
reform in many ways
and simultaneously renders non-discrimination laws
inadequately.
Economic justice remains a necessary part
of civil and human rights struggles,
but strategies need to be developed
that will dilute both the financial
and psychological benefits of discrimination.
Recognition is rendered an insecure achievement
when it is reliant on the largesse
of possessing the power,
although possess the power
to grant or deny it,
or when it poses self-interest
and moral persuasion.
Hate violence does not correlate
readily to economic disparities
as the deaths of Tyra Hunter and Ben Chin,
as well as issues faced by S,
have to do with systematic evaluation
of their individualism and their communities.
These evaluations do not take place
in terms of material worth.
The question in these cases was whether or not
the victims deserve justice rather than if they could afford it.
Hate-motivated violence, whether opportunistic
or state sanctioned, prohibits trans people
from fully participating in our culture and society.
Although this violence
is not the only civil rights concern,
it is certainly the most direct means of prevention
in terms of dispelling rights claims.
The relationship between the refusal
of recognition and hate violence
is multi-layered and complex,
as there are three consequences beyond the causal relationship
of non-recognition
and its promotion of hate violence
by regarding the victims as deserved targets.
Additionally, non-recognition makes the frequency
of these crimes invisible.
It also leads to dismissive attitudes
of the criminal justice system, the media,
and public in that victims seem to bring violence
upon themselves.
And once the victims are left without sufficient support,
they begin to accept their unjust reality
as inevitable,
which leads to further unreported hate crimes
and promotes a cycle of suppression and silence.
Using the example of the O'Rough
of Case,
we can see how trans individuals
are automatically misrepresented within mass media
and the criminal justice is
O'Rough being accused of a
as a sexual fraud,
is the point that I kind of want to get at,
because the mass media is always
it continues
to just portray
anti-trans crimes as
I don't know, they just
they make it like sensational
where every time you read about it,
it's like if it never happens
oh my gosh another, this trans person
was
accosted or was killed
or was a victim in this
although these crimes happen all the time
and they have trouble with names
and getting the proper terminology
correct
and also their combination of
underreporting and misreporting
by
recent authoritative figures who might say
you know, oh it was just
what we have
I don't want to call, oh I guess they are bigots
but like bigot police who might say
let's say it was a trans
woman who is
the victim of a crime, he might just turn around
and say oh the victim was a man, don't worry about it
and just a lot of these issues
get just swept under the rug
and forgotten about
and the result of it
is that the sources that do come out
or they have to be ridiculously low
compared to what the numbers truly are
we've already talked about how
these numbers are rendered
pretty much invisible by just the
overarching
discrimination
and
I don't know, I just
I non-realize
anyway, clearly
we are in need of some change
this ultimately leads one
toward a system of critical multiculturalism
where gender
non-conformity is valued
it goes on to connect
the transgender realities in the United States
with cultural systems outside
allowing us to see that transgender identities
do not necessarily herald the decay
and the end of civilization
it's simply just one of many cultural possibilities
