Something that I hear a lot from people in activist communities/internet activism is something that can be broadly generalized to "It's not anyone's place to question another person's identity." This can also filter to gender identification, pronouns, sexual orientations, and other things like that. I'm interested, because as of the past couple of months, there has been a sort of rise in activism from segments of the internet where these same people feel like one obviously cannot accept that person's identity, without accepting some rather unfortunate consequences too.
Of course, there have been people that identified in ways that the mainstream and perhaps even radical circles chose not to acknowledge as correct or worthy of respect in the past. They would probably still not be accepted within social justice movements today. What I am thinking of is the growth and subsequent marginalization of pro-pedophile groups like NAMBLA. Sure, you have the odd queer activist who will defend the right of NAMBLA to lobby for pederasty: you have Allen Ginsberg, or Harry Hay for instance. But the majority of queer activist groups, along with most of the other social justice groups, refuse to see pedophiles as an oppressed group, or as a legitimate identification that requires the level of respect that other sexual and gender minorities do.
But something that has come up more recently is taking the rhetoric and ideology surrounding transgender people (and their narrative) and affixing them to other identities. Perhaps the most "out there" version of this would be the Otherkin phenomenon. That is, people who feel like they secretly have the soul/essence of some sort of other species (or mythological creature). Describing themselves as having "species dysphoria" and use the societal understanding of trans* people as "X in a Y's body," they pattern their ideas on one specific type of transgender self-understanding. Sometimes they want to do surgery in order to realign themselves with what they feel they are on the inside. You get the picture. To most people, this seems ridiculous if harmless. Of course, intuitive "ridiculousness" by society is not really a good metric of whether something should be respected, in my opinion.
Feelings get a bit more heated, however, when it comes to people identifying as a group that they are not "Really" part of. Two examples that I have seen recently are those who identify as transabled and those who identify as transethnic/transracial. The basic rundown of these two groups is that transabled people see themselves as dysphoric due to their lack of a specific disability, whereas transethnic people generally see themselves as identifying as a race that they were not 'born as'; this also sometimes includes surgeries. It's hard for me to find a lot of stuff on transethnicity, but from what I've heard, it basically tracks that way.
I bring those up, because most of the people that say that a person should not question another's identity are very quick to judge whether these identities are 'appropriative' or 'correct' or other things like that. That seems to me, to be a bit hypocritical.
That might anger people, but I guess what I mean by that is that although those identities do seem to me to be intuitively different than transgender ideology, I have seen the concept of intuition used in ways that are transphobic before. What strikes me is that people who on one hand say that we should never criticize certain types of identities are generally the ones to think of these as completely untenable. For me, I think it is rather arbitrary to say "gender identities/sexual orientations are unquestionable" while ethnic or racial identities are. Both are socially constructed, and also have less division than is generally credited by society. In fact, race and ethnicity are much less binary than gender is in Western society.
This would seem to lead me to three solutions:
1) Racial and ability identities should not be questioned, much like gender identities should not be questioned.
2) They are somehow different.
3) Not all gender identities (or ways that gender is conceptualized in trans* ideology) deserve respect.
I am not sure where I fall on this. Accepting choice 1 seems to have a whole lot of unfortunate consequences: people in blackface, racial essentializing, all of that. While most activists would take number 2, I want to point out some flaws that I see with many of the arguments that are made on that point.
While the majority of people I see who reject the idea of transethnic identity claim that transethnicity and transgender identity have nothing in common, there is a level of irony in the statements that they make: since most of the people who identify as transethnic would be called "white people who want to become people of color," the arguments mostly take the form of appropriation: that is, privileged people taking the identity of those who are oppressed. But I feel like I have heard that argument before... where have I...
Oh wait! Here it is!
I mean, honestly. Part of the reason that I feel uncomfortable with the arguments against these people is because most of them track pretty easily onto the arguments that some lesbian feminists make against trans women. Even the argument that transethnic people grew up white/don't have the culture or history of non-white people has a sort of "womyn born womyn" stylizing behind it. Or that transethnic people make non-white peoples into a stereotype: also a Janice Raymond argument against trans women.
So that details my discomfort with most of the arguments being currently used against people who identify as these groups. My own discomfort comes from essentialization of whiteness and different ethnicities; however, I recognize that that also reflects my discomfort with the transgender essentialist narratives. I also find the wholesale co-option of transgender rhetoric a bit unrealistic. While ethnicity (and perhaps disability) might function in similar ways to gender, I see that the rhetoric is being used without the theoretical grounding. By this, I mean that I would expect transethnic discourse to reflect postcolonial ideas more than queer theory, if it were trying to understand ethnicity and race in the context that they are understood in a theoretical sense today.
Although, like I said, I am still undecided.
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Monday, March 5, 2012
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Liberal Democrats for Santorum: Really?
I mean, I guess I should qualify that at the beginning, I found the concept of a Santorum campaign pretty entertaining. The sheer ridiculousness of his political positions was enough to promise some sort of entertainment. But I've felt myself backing away from that kind of thought. Sure, Republican candidate Santorum might be an interesting thought experiment. But do I really want to go there? I came to the conclusion that it really doesn't make any sense, and all the arguments that I kept hearing for Democrats supporting/voting for Rick Santorum were not only somewhat incorrect, but they came from a place a great privilege.
The crux of the argument is that if Rick Santorum was elected in the primaries, he would have no way of ever beating Barack Obama: therefore there is no problem with supporting Santorum. I don't find this argument convincing at all, and I think it shows a lack of political awareness that is pretty profound. After all, I would say that no matter who the people running are, you are generally going to get 40-45% of people voting simply along party lines. Even more if you consider that racism affects this election. And then, you have the simple fact that no one on the earth knows the future. Conceivably any damn thing could happen between now and November: Iran-Israel war, Eurozone meltdown, et cetera. All of these could put Barack Obama in a much worse position to win any sort of election: then you would have a President Santorum. So, the entire idea is based on a relatively flawed strategy.
I also think that propping Santorum up is kind of a shitty thing to do to a host of minorities. The more time that Santorum is able to talk about how we should get rid of contraception, the more that becomes a legitimate view in the public square. Let alone his stances on abortion, which are already kind of mainstream in lots of places. Let alone the fact that this is basically a way of raising up a person who has made a job off of hate speech against queer people 'for the lulz' (the founding idea was called Operation Hilarity, after all). Everyone wrings their hands about queer kids having self esteem issues, but then we are supposed to say that it's alright to pour toxic misinformation and hatred out into the public consciousness even more because we want a politician to win by a bit more? To me, that seems like being a terrible ally to women, ethnic minorities, and queer people. And you are moving the Overton Window in the opposite direction of what you want.
Moreover, most of the arguments for this have a lot of privilege coming from those who argue for it. Most of the people that I've heard argue for this are in most ways unaffected by what would happen if Santorum became President: that is, they are people living in relatively liberal areas, are white, well off, cis* and frequently are male. There are obviously exceptions, but this has been my experience. So it seems like they are kind of bargaining with someone else's livelihood, and that is what I would call "a dick move." Then they tell the people who are a bit leery of electing someone who would have a much worse impact on them, that they are being overemotional, or any other number of misogynist/homophobic words. Politics is war, right? Never mind that that hypermasculine concept of politics is part of the reason we are in this problem right now.
You know what? They think that Santorum couldn't possibly win because the people I've seen only hang out in liberal echo chambers. Either online, or in the Bay Area. The thing is, I know a lot of people back in Kansas who would agree with a lot of what Santorum is saying I mean, I have no doubt that he would win there: he would win in a lot of places. So don't tell me how ridiculous his candidacy is, because I've lived places that Kris Kobach won election.
You know what? They think that Santorum couldn't possibly win because the people I've seen only hang out in liberal echo chambers. Either online, or in the Bay Area. The thing is, I know a lot of people back in Kansas who would agree with a lot of what Santorum is saying I mean, I have no doubt that he would win there: he would win in a lot of places. So don't tell me how ridiculous his candidacy is, because I've lived places that Kris Kobach won election.
In the same vein, I hear a lot of people respond to the claim that giving Santorum a stage to say all his terrible things is necessary because his ideas need to be put to people upfront so that they can reject them. I don't know what hypothetical fantasy world these people live in, but I think I might fill out some immigration paperwork. Oh wait, I know, it's called living in the Bay Area and being a well off, white, cis, able-bodied person. Only if you live in the Pacific coast and never stop in between cities would you think that people are not confronted with being queer, or being a woman, at all times. If we should really put up the face of these ideas, we should all just write "Fred Phelps" in for the ballot, then people would really have to face up to bigotry. Well, that is if people weren't already aware of the fact that lots of Republican politicians are generally bigoted.
You know what? There's a reason that Santorum is where he is now. It's not because he hid his secret hatred of queer people. It's the fact that his stuff gets put out there, and he wins, because lots of people agree with him. There are just a lot of bigoted people in the world, and it all can't be like the rich white gay paradise that is San Francisco or Berkeley. If you think that anti-queer people bigotry is something that doesn't come up in midwestern states, or that people there would all of a sudden say "or wait, Rick Santorum doesn't like gay people? That's terrible!" you live in bubble that ignores the fact that in most places, lots of people agree with him.
Friday, February 24, 2012
You Just Replaced a Bad Word with a Worse One
I'm tired of the word "progressive." It's become the self-identifier of people who may have used to call themselves liberal, and has become pretty much the de factor monarch of terms used to identify a rather nebulous group of people who are defined by "Not being conservative." In a weird Mircea Eliade way, conservative is likewise defined in that via negativa: conservatives are those who are "not liberal/progressive/commies."
I discussed with Anna perhaps a couple of days ago, and we both agreed that it didn't make any sense to call oneself a liberal: it hardly stands for what the term originally meant. I mean, I suppose liberals of our day share some with Locke and Smith, but when economists like Hayek and von Mises also fit that category (and perhaps more closely), it's time to get rid of a word like that. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like that was the reason that people fled from that word. In fact, the reason why is because conservatives somehow managed to make their self identification a negative thing, and so they promptly ceded ground and ran away from it, to "progressive." Not even to mention things like "socialist."
Progressive wasn't really a new word though. It really actually recalls an attitude and movement starting in the late 1800's. The fact that we are recalling the good old days of that time period is a little depressing in and of itself. But I want to critique why it is that we might be using this word (if it is anything more than simply nostalgia).
I think my main problem with the word "Progressive" is that it has this whole Western teleology feeling to it: there is obviously Progress (with a capital P) and we will continuously get better until our society is some sort of utopia. This implies that anyone who happens to disagree with a progressive happens to be 'regressive' or a backwards person. We have certainly never heard this rhetoric in colonialist thought before. Oh wait, yes we have. So apparently there is some sort of objective measure that progressives all have the innate knowledge of, and will assist all the other people in achieving.
You know, Liberal is a terrible word for someone with the vague area of politics that I occupy: I disagree with much of what would be called 'liberal' thought. But at least it actually refers to a system of belief- it actually says something about the person who claims to be a liberal. With the word "progressive" you simply have a political notion based upon the vague idea of "Progress," which is not only something completely unfalsifiable (and therefore improvable) but also sound and fury signifying nothing. It's basically like claiming to be a "Good People" political group. Who wouldn't want to progress? I mean, even neoconservatives think that they are enabling progress by giving their version of it (democracy) through wars. I mean, you only have to look at the collection of groups in the world that call themselves "Progressive" to realize that the word has basically no worth. And not only does it have no real meaning, the only true depth it has is one that is a concept generally used to further things like cultural imperialism. So... great choice?
Saturday, February 11, 2012
A Short Interlude: Why I'm Annoyed with the Contraception Debate
Ok, so I know that this is kind of breaking up the flow of my last post. But I kind of just want to voice my entire ambivalence to the arguments that I have recently seen regarding the contraception "debates" that have been going on recently. Mainly two things that I've been thinking.
First: are we seriously at this point where we are arguing about whether people should be allowed to use birth control? I mean... if someone thinks that that's a winner for politics, then ok. But I think that is shows how ridiculously terrible the entire political scene is right now. We've been ceding ground to people who want to take away sexual liberties for the past 40 years, and now we're at the point that condoms and birth control are being debated. That is so messed up that it kind of makes me want to scream. Also, the fact that some religious beliefs may not like birth control, doesn't mean that it's something that they don't have to pay for. I wish I could work for the Quakers and not have to pay taxes that go to war because of my "religious conscience," but I'd still get put in prison.
That is one that goes without saying. The second feeling I have on it is a bit more complex. I'm not Roman Catholic, and I disagree with the Roman Catholic Church on a lot of things, but I'm getting really frustrated by the rhetoric that is going on around this.
I don't think people quite realize the societal level that anti-Catholicism runs in this country, and there have been a lot of comments that I've heard from ostensibly "Progressive" (I hate that term, but it's a self identification) people have given into it. There is kind of the same thing going on for Mormons because of Romney, but I would talk about that later if necessary. But there have been a lot of people spreading rumors and general comments about Roman Catholics, or the Church that I think are pretty suspicious. Insofar as they have a long history in American Anti-Catholicism.
What I mean is, that I've heard plenty of people say things such as "The Catholic Church controls all the Catholics in Congress", or that Rick Santorum would answer to the Pope if elected President, or calling Catholics 'papists'. I've heard that the Catholic Church was why George W. Bush won his second term, because of their massive influence and money. Never mind that those people don't get that Catholics are generally more leftist in politics than the average person. Look, we've heard all of this before, and it was when we had JFK running for President. We can say that Rick Santorum would be a terrible President without falling into rhetorical conspiracy theories that were prominent 50 years ago.
The other thing that pisses me off is the recent mentioning of Catholic child abuse scandals. Now, there are a couple of different reasons for this. One of them is that almost all of them are done in the context of joking ABOUT CHILD ABUSE. Scoring cheap political points by making jokes at the expense of children who have been abused (even if the joke is intended for their abuser) is gross, and the people who do it should think twice before doing it. You're still joking about rape, even if you "mean it for good reasons". The second is that it follows a lot of the unfortunate trends of talking about Catholic child abuse scandals. The emphasis on Catholic priests' sex abuse over other faith traditions echoes both the American idea of priests as homosexuals, but of homosexuals as child molesters. From what I've been able to find, The John Jay Report on Catholic child sex abuse notes that the prevalence of abusing priests is about 4%, which is about the same amount as pedophilia across demographics.
What I'm not saying is that that is alright. But I think the obsession with Catholic priests is one that echoes a long history of messed up attitudes. We don't bring up teachers abusing students every time that they disagree with us, so why do that with priests? I think it comes both from American prejudices of the Catholic Church, along with homophobia, since the abuse is statistically more homosexual than places like schools.
First: are we seriously at this point where we are arguing about whether people should be allowed to use birth control? I mean... if someone thinks that that's a winner for politics, then ok. But I think that is shows how ridiculously terrible the entire political scene is right now. We've been ceding ground to people who want to take away sexual liberties for the past 40 years, and now we're at the point that condoms and birth control are being debated. That is so messed up that it kind of makes me want to scream. Also, the fact that some religious beliefs may not like birth control, doesn't mean that it's something that they don't have to pay for. I wish I could work for the Quakers and not have to pay taxes that go to war because of my "religious conscience," but I'd still get put in prison.
That is one that goes without saying. The second feeling I have on it is a bit more complex. I'm not Roman Catholic, and I disagree with the Roman Catholic Church on a lot of things, but I'm getting really frustrated by the rhetoric that is going on around this.
I don't think people quite realize the societal level that anti-Catholicism runs in this country, and there have been a lot of comments that I've heard from ostensibly "Progressive" (I hate that term, but it's a self identification) people have given into it. There is kind of the same thing going on for Mormons because of Romney, but I would talk about that later if necessary. But there have been a lot of people spreading rumors and general comments about Roman Catholics, or the Church that I think are pretty suspicious. Insofar as they have a long history in American Anti-Catholicism.
What I mean is, that I've heard plenty of people say things such as "The Catholic Church controls all the Catholics in Congress", or that Rick Santorum would answer to the Pope if elected President, or calling Catholics 'papists'. I've heard that the Catholic Church was why George W. Bush won his second term, because of their massive influence and money. Never mind that those people don't get that Catholics are generally more leftist in politics than the average person. Look, we've heard all of this before, and it was when we had JFK running for President. We can say that Rick Santorum would be a terrible President without falling into rhetorical conspiracy theories that were prominent 50 years ago.
The other thing that pisses me off is the recent mentioning of Catholic child abuse scandals. Now, there are a couple of different reasons for this. One of them is that almost all of them are done in the context of joking ABOUT CHILD ABUSE. Scoring cheap political points by making jokes at the expense of children who have been abused (even if the joke is intended for their abuser) is gross, and the people who do it should think twice before doing it. You're still joking about rape, even if you "mean it for good reasons". The second is that it follows a lot of the unfortunate trends of talking about Catholic child abuse scandals. The emphasis on Catholic priests' sex abuse over other faith traditions echoes both the American idea of priests as homosexuals, but of homosexuals as child molesters. From what I've been able to find, The John Jay Report on Catholic child sex abuse notes that the prevalence of abusing priests is about 4%, which is about the same amount as pedophilia across demographics.
What I'm not saying is that that is alright. But I think the obsession with Catholic priests is one that echoes a long history of messed up attitudes. We don't bring up teachers abusing students every time that they disagree with us, so why do that with priests? I think it comes both from American prejudices of the Catholic Church, along with homophobia, since the abuse is statistically more homosexual than places like schools.
Monday, February 6, 2012
Going to School to Be a Glorified Part Time Worker (and a call to action)
When I talk to most people about my plans for when I get out of school, I think that we have very different visions of the landscape that I am looking out into. I'm definitely better off than most people, but I just want to kind of outline what going into higher education is like:
So, let's say I hypothetically get accepted into a Ph.D program. Great! That is pretty difficult, since they are really getting rid of a lot of acceptance into those programs (for reasons we'll see later). I could hypothetically get a full ride scholarship, or maybe just a partial one. If any scholarship is involved though, you can better believe that I will be in some sort of T.A. position. What that means is that I will be a 'teaching assistant' for a class that is taught by a long term professor, usually with a large student class.
I'm pretty conflicted about the idea of T.A.'ing. On one hand, it's a good way of teaching graduate students how to teach, and it gives you a good amount of experience. On the other hand, I think it can get in the way of the learning that Ph.D study requires in a lot of instances, usually by forcing a student to do a whole bunch of work that is not really helpful for learning how to teach. This basically amounts to menial work like grading papers. This allows for teachers to teach giant classes and have T.A.'s do the work that isn't lecturing to a giant class full of students who aren't exactly paying attention; not quality education, but also it allows for the school to hire less teachers.
In any case, I would do that for some years, and then graduate. Yay! At this point, I am either incredibly lucky to have not gained any debt, or I am in debt to a bank. This debt is basically permanent: even bankruptcy can't get rid of student debt. So, at an interest rate of about 6% compounded a year, I will start to look for a job. There's basically two types of jobs that professors can get. There is a job that is tenured, and there are non-tenured jobs. Now, when most people think about a professorship, they are thinking a tenured professor. But perhaps they shouldn't, and here's why:
There's a pretty big difference between a tenured professor and a non-tenured (also called adjuct or visiting) professor. Tenured professors get paid a decent salary, and also get health benefits, vacation, etc. All the things a reasonable full time job would give. Adjunct professors do not get the same thing: many times they are paid barely above minimum wage for a position that is technically part time, but requires more than 40 hours.
So why would you hire a tenured professor? Well, that's exactly the question that schools have asked themselves, and they've decided that they mostly don't need them anymore. So they'll hire some, just like some poor Americans become honest-to-God rich from 'working hard'. But the majority will be Adjunct, and they can fill in the gaps with T.A.s (see?), sometimes even undergrad students. If you look closely, this is exactly what has happened at jobs like Target/Walmart. As opposed to hiring one person for 40 hours a week and having to pay pesky things like benefits (or a real salary), they will hire two people for 20 hours a week, paying significantly less to get the same amount of work.
Well, not really. The quality goes down, sure. But in America, it's not the quality of the college education you get, it's the bare minimum that you get it. It's a status symbol for putting in a certain amount of money.
So, with the decrease in tenured jobs, I will probably have to settle for a 25k per year adjunct job, with no benefits. The sad thing is that you get people defending this system, because you have to 'pay your dues' to get a tenured position. Or to teach because it's 'what you love'. Well, besides the Stockholm Syndrome/abusive husband logic that goes into that, I would say that this system is rigged to generally allow people who are already well off to get these full time professorships. Only people who have some sort of buffer of money can live that way for the years required to get a good job. And these people with the buffer are generally upper class, white, etc.
Of course, there won't ever be enough tenured jobs for all the adjunct faculty (since they keep getting rid of the tenured jobs), so what does that mean? That means that the people who can't financially afford to hold a sub-living wage will have to drop out of it. It's basically a system that is predicated on crushing intelligent people's dreams, wasting their resources, and continuing the racist, sexist, classist status quo. All in order to tie people up into wage slavery to pay off their exorbitant debt they got in the process.
This isn't even to mention the fact that many people are shoved into college by a society that requires it for any job you won't get scoffed at for having, only to call you entitled if you don't take that same job because it won't pay your student loans.
With that in mind, I'm going to (in the next post) investigate the ethical and political arguments for a Student debt/loan Strike.
So, let's say I hypothetically get accepted into a Ph.D program. Great! That is pretty difficult, since they are really getting rid of a lot of acceptance into those programs (for reasons we'll see later). I could hypothetically get a full ride scholarship, or maybe just a partial one. If any scholarship is involved though, you can better believe that I will be in some sort of T.A. position. What that means is that I will be a 'teaching assistant' for a class that is taught by a long term professor, usually with a large student class.
I'm pretty conflicted about the idea of T.A.'ing. On one hand, it's a good way of teaching graduate students how to teach, and it gives you a good amount of experience. On the other hand, I think it can get in the way of the learning that Ph.D study requires in a lot of instances, usually by forcing a student to do a whole bunch of work that is not really helpful for learning how to teach. This basically amounts to menial work like grading papers. This allows for teachers to teach giant classes and have T.A.'s do the work that isn't lecturing to a giant class full of students who aren't exactly paying attention; not quality education, but also it allows for the school to hire less teachers.
In any case, I would do that for some years, and then graduate. Yay! At this point, I am either incredibly lucky to have not gained any debt, or I am in debt to a bank. This debt is basically permanent: even bankruptcy can't get rid of student debt. So, at an interest rate of about 6% compounded a year, I will start to look for a job. There's basically two types of jobs that professors can get. There is a job that is tenured, and there are non-tenured jobs. Now, when most people think about a professorship, they are thinking a tenured professor. But perhaps they shouldn't, and here's why:
There's a pretty big difference between a tenured professor and a non-tenured (also called adjuct or visiting) professor. Tenured professors get paid a decent salary, and also get health benefits, vacation, etc. All the things a reasonable full time job would give. Adjunct professors do not get the same thing: many times they are paid barely above minimum wage for a position that is technically part time, but requires more than 40 hours.
So why would you hire a tenured professor? Well, that's exactly the question that schools have asked themselves, and they've decided that they mostly don't need them anymore. So they'll hire some, just like some poor Americans become honest-to-God rich from 'working hard'. But the majority will be Adjunct, and they can fill in the gaps with T.A.s (see?), sometimes even undergrad students. If you look closely, this is exactly what has happened at jobs like Target/Walmart. As opposed to hiring one person for 40 hours a week and having to pay pesky things like benefits (or a real salary), they will hire two people for 20 hours a week, paying significantly less to get the same amount of work.
Well, not really. The quality goes down, sure. But in America, it's not the quality of the college education you get, it's the bare minimum that you get it. It's a status symbol for putting in a certain amount of money.
So, with the decrease in tenured jobs, I will probably have to settle for a 25k per year adjunct job, with no benefits. The sad thing is that you get people defending this system, because you have to 'pay your dues' to get a tenured position. Or to teach because it's 'what you love'. Well, besides the Stockholm Syndrome/abusive husband logic that goes into that, I would say that this system is rigged to generally allow people who are already well off to get these full time professorships. Only people who have some sort of buffer of money can live that way for the years required to get a good job. And these people with the buffer are generally upper class, white, etc.
Of course, there won't ever be enough tenured jobs for all the adjunct faculty (since they keep getting rid of the tenured jobs), so what does that mean? That means that the people who can't financially afford to hold a sub-living wage will have to drop out of it. It's basically a system that is predicated on crushing intelligent people's dreams, wasting their resources, and continuing the racist, sexist, classist status quo. All in order to tie people up into wage slavery to pay off their exorbitant debt they got in the process.
This isn't even to mention the fact that many people are shoved into college by a society that requires it for any job you won't get scoffed at for having, only to call you entitled if you don't take that same job because it won't pay your student loans.
With that in mind, I'm going to (in the next post) investigate the ethical and political arguments for a Student debt/loan Strike.
Friday, February 3, 2012
Is something ever 'just a preference'? (Pt. 2)
Right when Anna talks about how insightful I am, I have a post about Ska puns. Sorry if anyone was expecting any different.
But! In my last real post I was talking about whether something being 'just a preference' was a way of avoiding responsibility if the preference seems racist. I think that using that example, I was able to show that it is not really tenable to say that showing racial preference has no ties to racist thinking, and that it being out of one's control doesn't really make it any less of a problem. At the very least, I think that I raised questions as to the legitimacy of the 'well that's just what I like", and why at least in the instance of desiring other people, that is not a complete defense against criticism. At the end, I said that I was going to bring this question to gender, and look at whether this criticism of 'just my preference' could be extended in the same way.
Just for some background in my feelings on gender: I think that it is completely a social construct. That isn't to say that there aren't personality traits that might be inborn; there are certain physical characteristics that one might be born with, or a set that one feels more comfortable with. However, the grouping of 'male/men' and 'female/women' is socially constructed, and the ways that we understand people as being grouped into them is definitely not some sort of objective reasoning. Let alone that there are two definite categories, male/female, is its own opinion, not fact. Just to give a quick, very cursory Gender theory 101.
So in the light of that thinking (which postulates both race and gender as categories which are socially created) we come to a challenging thought. If your sexual preference being based on race feels to many people as intuitively prejudiced, then why is it different with gender (barring heterosexism/cissexism/tradition)? That is to say, don't all the arguments that I made in the previous post about race apply in perhaps similar ways to identities like 'straight' or perhaps even 'gay' or 'lesbian'?
What pushed me to write this this time was a recent news article where Cynthia Nixon said that her gayness "is a choice". Later, she withdrew that statement. This drew a large amount of ire from the mainstream LGB people who believe that there is some sort of physiological or genetic cause to their orientation. I disagree with them, based on the notion of gender that I have above, but I don't really want to discuss that at this post.
The question might be: "Is it problematic (not a word I enjoy, but I'll use here) to distinguish between who you are attracted to based on gender/sex?" As we saw before, the majority of arguments are going to fall along the same two lines that the race question did, although this time with much more emphasis on the first response than the second. To show those again in this new argument, it would be:
But! In my last real post I was talking about whether something being 'just a preference' was a way of avoiding responsibility if the preference seems racist. I think that using that example, I was able to show that it is not really tenable to say that showing racial preference has no ties to racist thinking, and that it being out of one's control doesn't really make it any less of a problem. At the very least, I think that I raised questions as to the legitimacy of the 'well that's just what I like", and why at least in the instance of desiring other people, that is not a complete defense against criticism. At the end, I said that I was going to bring this question to gender, and look at whether this criticism of 'just my preference' could be extended in the same way.
Just for some background in my feelings on gender: I think that it is completely a social construct. That isn't to say that there aren't personality traits that might be inborn; there are certain physical characteristics that one might be born with, or a set that one feels more comfortable with. However, the grouping of 'male/men' and 'female/women' is socially constructed, and the ways that we understand people as being grouped into them is definitely not some sort of objective reasoning. Let alone that there are two definite categories, male/female, is its own opinion, not fact. Just to give a quick, very cursory Gender theory 101.
So in the light of that thinking (which postulates both race and gender as categories which are socially created) we come to a challenging thought. If your sexual preference being based on race feels to many people as intuitively prejudiced, then why is it different with gender (barring heterosexism/cissexism/tradition)? That is to say, don't all the arguments that I made in the previous post about race apply in perhaps similar ways to identities like 'straight' or perhaps even 'gay' or 'lesbian'?
What pushed me to write this this time was a recent news article where Cynthia Nixon said that her gayness "is a choice". Later, she withdrew that statement. This drew a large amount of ire from the mainstream LGB people who believe that there is some sort of physiological or genetic cause to their orientation. I disagree with them, based on the notion of gender that I have above, but I don't really want to discuss that at this post.
The question might be: "Is it problematic (not a word I enjoy, but I'll use here) to distinguish between who you are attracted to based on gender/sex?" As we saw before, the majority of arguments are going to fall along the same two lines that the race question did, although this time with much more emphasis on the first response than the second. To show those again in this new argument, it would be:
1) Not being sexually attracted to (or especially to) a certain gender/sex is not (cis)sexist
2) If it is (cis)sexist, then since it is not under my control, it is not unethical (/I'm not (cis)sexist)
Now, we see that a lot of the reasons that people brought up for finding certain races preferable are also used for having a certain orientation. However, there is a change in emphasis.
The one that is most obvious is that people will hold that the genders are biologically different in ways that races aren't, namely dealing with how genitals and secondary sex characteristics are configured. This sounds similar to Devin's comment that people might use race as a shorthand to mean certain physical characteristics, although in this instance it is much more obvious. There are two problems with this argument from what I can see: it denies the variety of different types of people might have the same primary (and secondary) sex characteristics (and is therefore cissexist/transphobic), and it is also based almost completely on bodily objectification of other people.
The one that is most obvious is that people will hold that the genders are biologically different in ways that races aren't, namely dealing with how genitals and secondary sex characteristics are configured. This sounds similar to Devin's comment that people might use race as a shorthand to mean certain physical characteristics, although in this instance it is much more obvious. There are two problems with this argument from what I can see: it denies the variety of different types of people might have the same primary (and secondary) sex characteristics (and is therefore cissexist/transphobic), and it is also based almost completely on bodily objectification of other people.
The first problem here is that when one says woman, they mean 'vagina' and when they say men, they mean 'penis'. This looks over the fact that there are women with penises, men with vaginas, and a range of possibilities in between. And, to be blunt, you can not see someone with clothes on and know for certain what is going to be under them. Not only that, but there is a great deal of overlap in body shape, type and so on between people of all genders. So saying that you are using shorthand to certain physical characteristics is presupposing that there is only one type of each gender. This is cissexist/transphobic in ways that are, to me, rather obvious.
The second problem is that when one says this, they are basically saying "all I care about in my partner is what junk they have," which while I wouldn't qualify it as transphobic, I would certainly say is either sexist or just generally unethical. to use an example: A straight man is into women, generally. But if he meets a transsexual woman who has not had any surgery (because she doesn't have money, doesn't want to, etc.) most of the time he will not count her as a person to sexually desire. What this implicitly says is that it's not being a woman that he is attracted to, but that the vagina is the most important quality when it comes to his attraction to women. This seems obviously objectifying, and kind of unethical. This likewise goes for gay men who don't want to date someone without a penis, lesbian women who don't want to date someone with a penis, straight women who don't want to date someone with a vagina, and all the people who would not date intersex people. It would appear that the preference is not for the person, but only for their body, which I find to be somewhat unethical.
Another argument for it being 'just a preference' is that people are attracted to a certain 'je ne sais quoi' about people of a certain gender. A lot of times, I kind of consider this to be a form of essentialism, but we can see how this basically trades in stereotypes just like people saying that 'asians are more [x]'. This will not always be the case, and to try to exclude people because their stereotype doesn't fit your attraction is not beyond criticism.
For instance, there are plenty of women who are just as masculine as most men. Beyond the objectifying primacy of genitals (as just discussed) it is hard for me to see why someone who is attracted to men for their masculinity would not likewise be attracted to masculine women. To say that it's a different form of masculinity seems to me to just be essentializing women as not being able to be as masculine as men.
So I guess that would be my response to the first point. Maybe not as fleshed out as I would want, but I can always add to it later. Now, onto the second response: this occurs much less frequently dealing with gender than race, mainly because the first response is still very acceptable. But I think the second response falls apart for many of the same reasons it did in the earlier post.
One perhaps can not change their desire, but one can certainly change how you look at people, how you group and categorize them. I reject the essentialism that someone can just instantly spot who a man or woman instinctively. And grouping people into 'man' and 'woman' is what allows for identities like 'gay' and 'straight' to exist. Without understanding people first as (definitely either) man or woman, the categories of gay and straight become very hard to use, and mostly unhelpful. So in that way, I would say being straight or gay is a choice: a choice to see men and women as the two main categories of people that exist, and to choose your partner based on that. I'm just not sure how ethical I think that choice is.
The second problem is that when one says this, they are basically saying "all I care about in my partner is what junk they have," which while I wouldn't qualify it as transphobic, I would certainly say is either sexist or just generally unethical. to use an example: A straight man is into women, generally. But if he meets a transsexual woman who has not had any surgery (because she doesn't have money, doesn't want to, etc.) most of the time he will not count her as a person to sexually desire. What this implicitly says is that it's not being a woman that he is attracted to, but that the vagina is the most important quality when it comes to his attraction to women. This seems obviously objectifying, and kind of unethical. This likewise goes for gay men who don't want to date someone without a penis, lesbian women who don't want to date someone with a penis, straight women who don't want to date someone with a vagina, and all the people who would not date intersex people. It would appear that the preference is not for the person, but only for their body, which I find to be somewhat unethical.
Another argument for it being 'just a preference' is that people are attracted to a certain 'je ne sais quoi' about people of a certain gender. A lot of times, I kind of consider this to be a form of essentialism, but we can see how this basically trades in stereotypes just like people saying that 'asians are more [x]'. This will not always be the case, and to try to exclude people because their stereotype doesn't fit your attraction is not beyond criticism.
For instance, there are plenty of women who are just as masculine as most men. Beyond the objectifying primacy of genitals (as just discussed) it is hard for me to see why someone who is attracted to men for their masculinity would not likewise be attracted to masculine women. To say that it's a different form of masculinity seems to me to just be essentializing women as not being able to be as masculine as men.
So I guess that would be my response to the first point. Maybe not as fleshed out as I would want, but I can always add to it later. Now, onto the second response: this occurs much less frequently dealing with gender than race, mainly because the first response is still very acceptable. But I think the second response falls apart for many of the same reasons it did in the earlier post.
One perhaps can not change their desire, but one can certainly change how you look at people, how you group and categorize them. I reject the essentialism that someone can just instantly spot who a man or woman instinctively. And grouping people into 'man' and 'woman' is what allows for identities like 'gay' and 'straight' to exist. Without understanding people first as (definitely either) man or woman, the categories of gay and straight become very hard to use, and mostly unhelpful. So in that way, I would say being straight or gay is a choice: a choice to see men and women as the two main categories of people that exist, and to choose your partner based on that. I'm just not sure how ethical I think that choice is.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Is something ever 'just a preference'? (Pt. 1)
I was having a discussion about this earlier, and wanted to see if maybe writing down my thoughts would make them more understandable. I'm a little edgy about writing about this, since some people might take it as an attack. I'm not trying to condescend to anyone, or de-legitimize their feelings. After all, I'm not always right.
On to the actual subject:
A lot of people seem to act like saying that something is 'just a preference' completely safeguards them from any criticism. Sure, there are preferences that are not really an ethical issue. Take one's favorite color, for instance. but then there are preferences that a lot of people (myself included) think are kind of ethically questionable. The example that I'm going to use for this is sexual attraction based on race.
You see this everywhere, and you see criticisms of it less than that, but still frequent. Take for instance, the John Mayer fiasco where he said (in possibly the most stupid way) that he is not attracted to women who aren't white. More generally, you see it in personal ads, saying that people either dislike certain races, or like them more than other races. The language implies that the average person is white, of course. There are identities along these lines: "Rice queen" (someone who prefers asians), et cetera. Racialicious has a very good article on the coded racism-via-preference that goes on on Craigslist, particularly.
Now, most people who either don't like certain races, or like certain ones especially so, would say that they are not racist at all. These things are just a preference, and they are not under their control in any way. There are two arguments (in fact, two contradictory arguments) going on in this statement, so let's break them down:
On to the actual subject:
A lot of people seem to act like saying that something is 'just a preference' completely safeguards them from any criticism. Sure, there are preferences that are not really an ethical issue. Take one's favorite color, for instance. but then there are preferences that a lot of people (myself included) think are kind of ethically questionable. The example that I'm going to use for this is sexual attraction based on race.
You see this everywhere, and you see criticisms of it less than that, but still frequent. Take for instance, the John Mayer fiasco where he said (in possibly the most stupid way) that he is not attracted to women who aren't white. More generally, you see it in personal ads, saying that people either dislike certain races, or like them more than other races. The language implies that the average person is white, of course. There are identities along these lines: "Rice queen" (someone who prefers asians), et cetera. Racialicious has a very good article on the coded racism-via-preference that goes on on Craigslist, particularly.
Now, most people who either don't like certain races, or like certain ones especially so, would say that they are not racist at all. These things are just a preference, and they are not under their control in any way. There are two arguments (in fact, two contradictory arguments) going on in this statement, so let's break them down:
1) Not being sexually attracted to (or especially to) a certain race is not racist.
2) If it is racist, then since it is not under my control, it is not unethical (/I'm not racist).
As for the first of these, I would say that this might be true in a world where there is no such thing as racism, or history. As it is, we see that the preferences just happen to generally be for white people, and they just happen to not like certain people of color. It seems very convenient that these preferences would just seem to line up with historical racism like that. And before you say 'well, some of them are specifically into black/asian/other PoC', when you look at a majority of these, we find that they prefer stereotypes of them. The reason why one can say 'I prefer asian women' is because you think that asian women are somehow different than white women, and this difference almost always reflects stereotypes. If you don't believe me, try looking for a person who wants to find a feminine black man or a decisive, energetic asian woman.
So saying that having these preferences doesn't line up with racist legacies is an excuse, and a wrong one at that. But what about argument 2? This one is something that you find when people are feeling defensive because you may have noted that their 'preference' seems a lot like prejudice.
2) If it is racist, then since it is not under my control, it is not unethical (/I'm not racist).
As for the first of these, I would say that this might be true in a world where there is no such thing as racism, or history. As it is, we see that the preferences just happen to generally be for white people, and they just happen to not like certain people of color. It seems very convenient that these preferences would just seem to line up with historical racism like that. And before you say 'well, some of them are specifically into black/asian/other PoC', when you look at a majority of these, we find that they prefer stereotypes of them. The reason why one can say 'I prefer asian women' is because you think that asian women are somehow different than white women, and this difference almost always reflects stereotypes. If you don't believe me, try looking for a person who wants to find a feminine black man or a decisive, energetic asian woman.
So saying that having these preferences doesn't line up with racist legacies is an excuse, and a wrong one at that. But what about argument 2? This one is something that you find when people are feeling defensive because you may have noted that their 'preference' seems a lot like prejudice.
I would say that there are a few assumptions going on in that statement. The first is that you cannot ever change your preferences at all, ever. The second is that if something is not under your control, you have no ethical responsibility for it. I'm interested in how many people think that either of those is true. Can we change or control who we desire? And if we can't, are those desires completely outside of the realm of criticism?
While I don't know whether you can change who you desire, or if you desire, I do think that we can change the categories that we see people in. Most of the people talking about race in these examples have a very simplistic notion of it, which allows them to separate people into very clear boxes. Not only are these boxes themselves pretty unhelpful (since people can be biracial, or all different sorts of 'asian'), but the labels that people place them into come with historical baggage of stereotypes. After all, one might ask for a black woman, thinking all sorts of stereotypes of 'bossy/sassy/whatever', and get the exact opposite. Even physically, there is not one type of 'asian man', et cetera. So dividing it into groups like that seems to be a problem, more than desiring certain qualities themselves.
Even if you can't change that preference, does it suddenly make it sacrosanct and unable to be criticized? Not completely, I don't think.
If we accept that preferences like this are a function of oppression, it isn't hard to see why: we are constantly bombarded with stereotypes and other racist (in this example) imagery. Does it make it fine to believe other racist things? Not really. We can admit that while it isn't completely the fault of the person for being raised in a racist society, that doesn't make the preferences or ideas any less of a problem. Of course, will this only function to make people more ashamed of their desire object choices? I'm not sure. But maybe they can take the way their desire functions as their unfortunate legacy in racist society, while trying to create a world where that legacy is minimized.
So that was basically the groundwork to argue that preferences are able to be criticized. In Part II I want to look at whether an analogy can be made between race and gender, and whether that makes identities like 'straight' or 'gay' themselves oppressive.
Even if you can't change that preference, does it suddenly make it sacrosanct and unable to be criticized? Not completely, I don't think.
If we accept that preferences like this are a function of oppression, it isn't hard to see why: we are constantly bombarded with stereotypes and other racist (in this example) imagery. Does it make it fine to believe other racist things? Not really. We can admit that while it isn't completely the fault of the person for being raised in a racist society, that doesn't make the preferences or ideas any less of a problem. Of course, will this only function to make people more ashamed of their desire object choices? I'm not sure. But maybe they can take the way their desire functions as their unfortunate legacy in racist society, while trying to create a world where that legacy is minimized.
So that was basically the groundwork to argue that preferences are able to be criticized. In Part II I want to look at whether an analogy can be made between race and gender, and whether that makes identities like 'straight' or 'gay' themselves oppressive.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Moral beliefs, objectivity, and cultural imperialism
Something that has been on my mind a lot:
There seems to be a sort of paradox when I think about discussions of morality and ethics. I think this has come into a kind of stark relief since I go not only to a school where many students are very vocal (rightly) about moral beliefs, but also about the dangers and missteps of oppressions like colonialism, racism, (hetero)(cis)sexism, ableism, and the like. The latter concern (that of oppression) is usually voiced through modern academic theory of some sort. Post-colonial, queer, or any other number of poststructuralist/postmodernist kind of theories are used to try to 'decolonize' or queer theology or generally argue against these oppressions. And usually the irony is that these are done in a modernist way: stating that something is objectively wrong.
I'm not sure where I stand on this, so bear with me, and if I say something that appears incredibly problematic or stupid, then tell me. What I'm saying is that i'm not playing devil's advocate or whatever. I'm going to start off with the idea that there is some sort of objective morality, and then kind of think through how that might be problematic, at least in a post-colonial sense.
Ok, so let's say that we have things that we can all agree are pretty dang terrible. And that these things are universally terrible, insofar as I mean that somehow they can be seen as being intrinsically evil/bad (I don't care about Nietzsche, I'm going to equivocate those two). I mean, in some sense, we can see how that is the case. In fact, I would say this is how most people would really act. To take an example: Many people would say that genocide is a bad deal. Or rape. I'm trying to do this in a way that doesn't make anyone feel like I'm using their history to win debate points, but those are two things that could conceivably be seen as intrinsically bad.
With that in mind, the problem comes from the fact that once one makes any one thing an intrinsic evil, it seems impossible to me that one doesn't cross into the line of cultural imperialism. Using rape as an example, one could easily rate societies by prevalence of rape, and that would seem to imply that those societies with the highest prevalence of rape were in some way, less moral or ethical than those with lower incidence of rape. Now that is simplistic, but you can see what I'm getting at here.
Not only that, but let's imagine that there were a society that had some sort of institutional or societally required rape and/or genocide. We would, granting an objective view of those acts inherent badness, have to determine that that society is structurally less ethical than a society without this institutionalized unethical behavior. I imagine that you can start seeing how this might lead to some really messed up ideas. In this instance, it would be morally justifiable to try to end the incidences of rape or genocide in these other societies, and this has been the story of cultural imperialism for the past hundreds of years. Although, granted that the colonial powers in many cases were not attacking things that seem as intuitively immoral as rape or genocide, it is the same basic worldview that we are trapped in when we start making any moral claims at all.
So is there a way of voicing any sort of moral claim without in some way sanctioning cultural imperialism?
This is where the more post-colonial theories come into the picture. The use of things like morality and ethics in order to colonize other people has not only been overt in the past, but continues to be so today. For an instance of this, look at the French government's recent fiasco regarding the niqab and women's veils. Many western feminists argue against this upon their idea of what is objectively bad for women, but many people would say that this objective morality is really a subjective cultural one.
The very premise of postmodernist arguments (which are the basis of postcolonial ones) is that the absolute truths and idea of objective knowledge, and progress are themselves cultural constructs. So this presents the picture of a complete ethical relativism in a cultural sense. The problem I see with a lot of these theories is that they seem to at the same time enforce cultural/ethical relativism, while at the same time enforcing an objective morality. I mean, one of the base ideas of most of the authors that we cite have argued that morality itself is a construct of society; those who don't (Mary Daly, being a feminist example) are in some ways the bane of the poststructuralist/postmodern concept of how ethics and morality are formed.
For instance, I would say that many of the people who I know who use these critiques of colonialism/heteronormativity/etc do hold some sort of beliefs on some sort of morality. For instance, I try to make world a more livable place for queer people. Any activism is the statement of some sort of moral belief, in this way.
What is hard to understand about this is that we take this post-colonial or post-modern view in a macro sense, but refuse to use it in a micro sense (even though the same critiques would still apply). Like, the critiques against enforcing one's morals upon other cultures could just as easily apply to our own cultures; in fact, the migration of peoples makes it impossible to really distinguish in any meaningful way. To say that we can have moral statements and pronouncements about our home society/countries seems to be acknowledging the nation state as a unified thing. Put more plainly, what right do I have to be angry over making being queer illegal in Montana, since that is simply a different culture than mine? Wouldn't it be similarly culturally imperialistic to make prescriptions to Montanans, just to a different degree than maybe Uganda?
Taken even more to closer view, the same critiques exist in inter-personal interactions. Someone could be raised in a different culture, and to say that my viewpoints are right and theirs need to be changed is the exact same argument that colonizers make.
Another problem comes from the very nature of naming oppression or colonialism is in itself a value judgment of an objective nature. Although we are to believe that morality is a social construct, and not objective, somehow we are still to treat oppression as if it is objectively wrong. Which starts to raise the question: in a postmodern viewpoint, how can one actually say that colonization is bad, and decolonization good? In a framework with no objective criterion, then there is simply things that people do. To make the claim of queer theory or postcolonial theory, there seems to be a paradox: one has to maintain the objective morality (against oppression or colonialism) that is critiqued as a contributor to colonialism.
Maybe I'll write more on this. But that is what I'm kind of thinking about now: is it possible to take the tenets of a post-modernist/poststructuralist or post-colonial theory earnestly and consistently, and be able to make any claim about ethics?
There seems to be a sort of paradox when I think about discussions of morality and ethics. I think this has come into a kind of stark relief since I go not only to a school where many students are very vocal (rightly) about moral beliefs, but also about the dangers and missteps of oppressions like colonialism, racism, (hetero)(cis)sexism, ableism, and the like. The latter concern (that of oppression) is usually voiced through modern academic theory of some sort. Post-colonial, queer, or any other number of poststructuralist/postmodernist kind of theories are used to try to 'decolonize' or queer theology or generally argue against these oppressions. And usually the irony is that these are done in a modernist way: stating that something is objectively wrong.
I'm not sure where I stand on this, so bear with me, and if I say something that appears incredibly problematic or stupid, then tell me. What I'm saying is that i'm not playing devil's advocate or whatever. I'm going to start off with the idea that there is some sort of objective morality, and then kind of think through how that might be problematic, at least in a post-colonial sense.
Ok, so let's say that we have things that we can all agree are pretty dang terrible. And that these things are universally terrible, insofar as I mean that somehow they can be seen as being intrinsically evil/bad (I don't care about Nietzsche, I'm going to equivocate those two). I mean, in some sense, we can see how that is the case. In fact, I would say this is how most people would really act. To take an example: Many people would say that genocide is a bad deal. Or rape. I'm trying to do this in a way that doesn't make anyone feel like I'm using their history to win debate points, but those are two things that could conceivably be seen as intrinsically bad.
With that in mind, the problem comes from the fact that once one makes any one thing an intrinsic evil, it seems impossible to me that one doesn't cross into the line of cultural imperialism. Using rape as an example, one could easily rate societies by prevalence of rape, and that would seem to imply that those societies with the highest prevalence of rape were in some way, less moral or ethical than those with lower incidence of rape. Now that is simplistic, but you can see what I'm getting at here.
Not only that, but let's imagine that there were a society that had some sort of institutional or societally required rape and/or genocide. We would, granting an objective view of those acts inherent badness, have to determine that that society is structurally less ethical than a society without this institutionalized unethical behavior. I imagine that you can start seeing how this might lead to some really messed up ideas. In this instance, it would be morally justifiable to try to end the incidences of rape or genocide in these other societies, and this has been the story of cultural imperialism for the past hundreds of years. Although, granted that the colonial powers in many cases were not attacking things that seem as intuitively immoral as rape or genocide, it is the same basic worldview that we are trapped in when we start making any moral claims at all.
So is there a way of voicing any sort of moral claim without in some way sanctioning cultural imperialism?
This is where the more post-colonial theories come into the picture. The use of things like morality and ethics in order to colonize other people has not only been overt in the past, but continues to be so today. For an instance of this, look at the French government's recent fiasco regarding the niqab and women's veils. Many western feminists argue against this upon their idea of what is objectively bad for women, but many people would say that this objective morality is really a subjective cultural one.
The very premise of postmodernist arguments (which are the basis of postcolonial ones) is that the absolute truths and idea of objective knowledge, and progress are themselves cultural constructs. So this presents the picture of a complete ethical relativism in a cultural sense. The problem I see with a lot of these theories is that they seem to at the same time enforce cultural/ethical relativism, while at the same time enforcing an objective morality. I mean, one of the base ideas of most of the authors that we cite have argued that morality itself is a construct of society; those who don't (Mary Daly, being a feminist example) are in some ways the bane of the poststructuralist/postmodern concept of how ethics and morality are formed.
For instance, I would say that many of the people who I know who use these critiques of colonialism/heteronormativity/etc do hold some sort of beliefs on some sort of morality. For instance, I try to make world a more livable place for queer people. Any activism is the statement of some sort of moral belief, in this way.
What is hard to understand about this is that we take this post-colonial or post-modern view in a macro sense, but refuse to use it in a micro sense (even though the same critiques would still apply). Like, the critiques against enforcing one's morals upon other cultures could just as easily apply to our own cultures; in fact, the migration of peoples makes it impossible to really distinguish in any meaningful way. To say that we can have moral statements and pronouncements about our home society/countries seems to be acknowledging the nation state as a unified thing. Put more plainly, what right do I have to be angry over making being queer illegal in Montana, since that is simply a different culture than mine? Wouldn't it be similarly culturally imperialistic to make prescriptions to Montanans, just to a different degree than maybe Uganda?
Taken even more to closer view, the same critiques exist in inter-personal interactions. Someone could be raised in a different culture, and to say that my viewpoints are right and theirs need to be changed is the exact same argument that colonizers make.
Another problem comes from the very nature of naming oppression or colonialism is in itself a value judgment of an objective nature. Although we are to believe that morality is a social construct, and not objective, somehow we are still to treat oppression as if it is objectively wrong. Which starts to raise the question: in a postmodern viewpoint, how can one actually say that colonization is bad, and decolonization good? In a framework with no objective criterion, then there is simply things that people do. To make the claim of queer theory or postcolonial theory, there seems to be a paradox: one has to maintain the objective morality (against oppression or colonialism) that is critiqued as a contributor to colonialism.
Maybe I'll write more on this. But that is what I'm kind of thinking about now: is it possible to take the tenets of a post-modernist/poststructuralist or post-colonial theory earnestly and consistently, and be able to make any claim about ethics?
Saturday, November 26, 2011
"New Atheism"- As new as your great-great-great-great grandfather
I've seen more and more things talking about the "New Atheists" spring up, and since I have a blog and opinions and things like that, I figured I might as well take a stab at it.
"New Atheism" is perhaps the most misleading term I could possibly think of to describe this movement. By New Atheism, I guess I'm going to mean the post-2000's marketing ploy that includes such illustrious old white dudes as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Dennett (always forget his first name). It seems to be a remarkably British phenomenon in terms of leadership, but it has recently had a large upswing in rhetoric from around America, so I guess that's cool? But the reason why it is misleading is because these are honestly not only the same arguments that we've been hearing for the past 500 odd years, but because they are seriously outdated, and problematic in many other ways.
First, I can see that people with no belief in a God have a lot of erasure in society, but can we back up a bit from the oppression olympics that is the "people wouldn't vote for an atheist President" thing? First- since I've heard many times the argument that our Founders weren't 'really' theists, it seems like we have already had atheists in governmental power, which undermines this argument. When arguing for systemic oppression, presidential leadership might show that you are coming from a very privileged place when discussing what your oppression is. Second, if you are going to argue for being super Oppressed (TM), I think it's funny to leave out a multitude of oppressed groups (trans* people, convicts, the mentally ill) in the survey. I guess that is a bit off topic, but just something I feel like deserves a little notice.
The more frustrating aspect of this whole "New Atheist" thing that makes the name of it even more ironic is it's complete dependence on the cultural precepts, narratives, and memes (see, I know Dawkins too) of Modernism. If we were going to call anything the "New Atheism" it should have been the post-modernists! But no, the New Atheists are the same people trotting out the same old tired arguments and committing the same problematic colonialist attitudes and using the same Protestant idea of secularism. You can see this because many of these New Atheist leaders (and they are leaders since they are profiting immensely from the capitalistic orgy of book selling that comes from disseminating their ideas) are, aside from their Atheism, rather conservative in most other areas.
Richard Dawkins, King of the 'Atheists', recently told a woman that she should not complain about sexism because of (what amounts to) scary brown people in other countries. Christopher Hitchens is a neo-conservative who is down for the whole "deposing other governments to spread democracy" kind of culturally imperialistic foreign policy. Sam Harris is arguing that morals can be taken from science, which is basically how the entire 'eugenics' thing happened. I don't know anything about Dennett, so whatever. And also, do you remember the last time that a book on this subject got published by a woman or queer person or person of color, or non-Westerner? How oddly coincidental that the same people propagating modernist, colonialist ideas would continue to be from the same privileged groups!
And it's really not only from the leaders of this movement that I hear things like this. I mean, since I have worked in radical politics/queer whatevers, I am many times the minority insofar as I am a theist. Luckily, queer activism has read (or pretended to read) post-colonial authors like Fanon and Said; I mean, most of our theory is based on Foucault and that kind of thing. But I have worked, and hung out a lot with people who are from this ideological position, and it seems to not only adhere to, but to revel in its problematic modernisms that have been questioned for the past 50 years.
Examples: at my old undergraduate school, the atheist group had a major event called "Reasonfest." Now, I think that is indicative of an uncritical adoption of the 'Enlightenment' (but also medieval) concepts of Reason, progress, and other things like that that have been used to culturally imperialize a large amount of the not Western world. Look at how these groups treat the idea of Islam! It is one that is completely in line with the historical view that had been held by Christians/Protestants, and one based in the idea that we should just go over to other cultures and enlighten them with our wonderful white knowledge. Excellent.
The fetishization of Reason and Science (with capitals) is part of the reason that many of these people I have talked to have the most difficulty dealing with my gender identity. They don't question what Science says, it is simply true, and therefore there are two sexes, two genders, and you don't have the right or reason to cross from one to the other. Usually, the 'non-religious' problems people have with the idea of gender-queer are much more loudly given.
I'm not saying that this makes them bad people, because they are only being the same as the mainstream society. My problem is that somehow, they feel like they have only rational knowledge that is indisputable, which is completely ridiculous. Everyone makes unfalsifiable faith claims about many things, most of them having been donated to us by our culture. I will talk about this later, probably, but how much more provable is it that we have "natural rights" or that people are in some metaphysical sense "equal" than that there is a God who created everything. Believe whichever one (or collection) you want, but that is not some sort of objective fact. Even the idea of personhood is a faith claim. So please stop acting like you're better than everyone else.
"New Atheism" is perhaps the most misleading term I could possibly think of to describe this movement. By New Atheism, I guess I'm going to mean the post-2000's marketing ploy that includes such illustrious old white dudes as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Dennett (always forget his first name). It seems to be a remarkably British phenomenon in terms of leadership, but it has recently had a large upswing in rhetoric from around America, so I guess that's cool? But the reason why it is misleading is because these are honestly not only the same arguments that we've been hearing for the past 500 odd years, but because they are seriously outdated, and problematic in many other ways.
First, I can see that people with no belief in a God have a lot of erasure in society, but can we back up a bit from the oppression olympics that is the "people wouldn't vote for an atheist President" thing? First- since I've heard many times the argument that our Founders weren't 'really' theists, it seems like we have already had atheists in governmental power, which undermines this argument. When arguing for systemic oppression, presidential leadership might show that you are coming from a very privileged place when discussing what your oppression is. Second, if you are going to argue for being super Oppressed (TM), I think it's funny to leave out a multitude of oppressed groups (trans* people, convicts, the mentally ill) in the survey. I guess that is a bit off topic, but just something I feel like deserves a little notice.
The more frustrating aspect of this whole "New Atheist" thing that makes the name of it even more ironic is it's complete dependence on the cultural precepts, narratives, and memes (see, I know Dawkins too) of Modernism. If we were going to call anything the "New Atheism" it should have been the post-modernists! But no, the New Atheists are the same people trotting out the same old tired arguments and committing the same problematic colonialist attitudes and using the same Protestant idea of secularism. You can see this because many of these New Atheist leaders (and they are leaders since they are profiting immensely from the capitalistic orgy of book selling that comes from disseminating their ideas) are, aside from their Atheism, rather conservative in most other areas.
Richard Dawkins, King of the 'Atheists', recently told a woman that she should not complain about sexism because of (what amounts to) scary brown people in other countries. Christopher Hitchens is a neo-conservative who is down for the whole "deposing other governments to spread democracy" kind of culturally imperialistic foreign policy. Sam Harris is arguing that morals can be taken from science, which is basically how the entire 'eugenics' thing happened. I don't know anything about Dennett, so whatever. And also, do you remember the last time that a book on this subject got published by a woman or queer person or person of color, or non-Westerner? How oddly coincidental that the same people propagating modernist, colonialist ideas would continue to be from the same privileged groups!
And it's really not only from the leaders of this movement that I hear things like this. I mean, since I have worked in radical politics/queer whatevers, I am many times the minority insofar as I am a theist. Luckily, queer activism has read (or pretended to read) post-colonial authors like Fanon and Said; I mean, most of our theory is based on Foucault and that kind of thing. But I have worked, and hung out a lot with people who are from this ideological position, and it seems to not only adhere to, but to revel in its problematic modernisms that have been questioned for the past 50 years.
Examples: at my old undergraduate school, the atheist group had a major event called "Reasonfest." Now, I think that is indicative of an uncritical adoption of the 'Enlightenment' (but also medieval) concepts of Reason, progress, and other things like that that have been used to culturally imperialize a large amount of the not Western world. Look at how these groups treat the idea of Islam! It is one that is completely in line with the historical view that had been held by Christians/Protestants, and one based in the idea that we should just go over to other cultures and enlighten them with our wonderful white knowledge. Excellent.
The fetishization of Reason and Science (with capitals) is part of the reason that many of these people I have talked to have the most difficulty dealing with my gender identity. They don't question what Science says, it is simply true, and therefore there are two sexes, two genders, and you don't have the right or reason to cross from one to the other. Usually, the 'non-religious' problems people have with the idea of gender-queer are much more loudly given.
I'm not saying that this makes them bad people, because they are only being the same as the mainstream society. My problem is that somehow, they feel like they have only rational knowledge that is indisputable, which is completely ridiculous. Everyone makes unfalsifiable faith claims about many things, most of them having been donated to us by our culture. I will talk about this later, probably, but how much more provable is it that we have "natural rights" or that people are in some metaphysical sense "equal" than that there is a God who created everything. Believe whichever one (or collection) you want, but that is not some sort of objective fact. Even the idea of personhood is a faith claim. So please stop acting like you're better than everyone else.
Friday, November 4, 2011
What is violence? Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me no more.
Ok. So in case you have either been living under some sort of rock, or refuse to speak about politics with other people, then the chances are that you have heard something about Occupy Wall Street (or you can adjust the name for whatever city you live in). I've had too many discussions about the merits and disadvantages and privileges of this group of protests to count, and I'm not exactly sure that it is helpful to put them up on the internet to argue over. Whether or not it has merit, it is definitely here now.
What interests me about these protests right now is that they are almost universally non-violent. And there is the sentence that gets me hung up: I feel like what we think of as violence, especially in terms of political action, isn't really something people discuss very much. And that is certainly an important definition to come to some sort of agreement to, isn't it? I mean, sure we might not necessarily completely agree, but it seems odd to just think that everyone intuitively knows exactly what 'violence' means, and that we all share the same definition. If I've learned anything at all from what I've studied, it is that assuming people define things the same way as you is a one way ticket to cliched negative outcomes-ville.
"But Joel, surely violence is easy to understand. Why do we have to overanalyze EVERYTHING?" I might hear someone say. Well, first of all random rhetorical device: back off. Second, unless there is something that I am missing, I don't think that I can quite get a cohesive definition of violence from the people I'm listening to. I hear lots of things called violent that seem 'on the edge'; less often, I hear things that I just automatically think are not violent. Putting glitter on people against their will? I'm sorry, that is not violent in any way that does justice to the concept. But, I guess it might just be easier to talk about what is intuitively violent first and then try to see how far we can expand those borders.
I think we can all agree that unprovokedly physically harming someone else is violent. Well, maybe politicians can't, but I try not to associate with people who lead countries into preemptive war. At the very least, we can say that a person who shoots someone else, or conspires to murder, or even mugs another, is committing a violent act.
I'm a pacifist, so I'm also going to include self defense as a violent act. Now, hear me out, because most people think that this is not legitimate. I'm not saying that a person who is defending themselves is equally morally culpable as the person who first initiated violence, but I am saying that self defense is a violent act. Not all acts of violence are equal to each other in terms of moral culpability.
Does causing mental harm constitute as violence? There are cases where it does seem to be violent. Assault, death threats, other such things seem as violent and harmful as any kick in the gut. The torment of bullying can in many cases be worse in the long run for the person being bullied than simple physical harm. Emotional violence has a way of being adopted by the victim, and that can be a much worse consequence than broken bones.
Of course, right now I'm just focusing on things that are done intentionally. The question of unintentional actions is so complicated that I don't even know what to do with it. I might look at it later, but for now we can stick with something a bit easier to discuss.
I also want to note that simple offense doesn't count as emotional violence. To use an example: a racist person might be distressed to have a person who is a minority move into their neighborhood. Does that make the person moving there violent? I don't think so. This is also something that might have to be looked at later: whether offense is just or not.
In any case, we're back to the idea of what is violent. Intentionally harming people physically or mentally is violent. Is throwing glitter on someone violent? I don't think that it quite reaches the levels of harm that I would call violence; that is to say, I don't see the harm. if maybe someone had a deathly fear of glitter, that might be violent. As the case is, it's merely a flashy way of telling someone you disagree.
Is Yelling violent? There are cases of it being violent, but there is nothing inherent to it to be violent. We yell over crowded streets, we even yell at someone when we are angry. That's not violent; the content of the yelling is what is violent. This is, of course, not universal: if you find someone who always reacts negatively to yelling, then using this to your advantage to harm them would be violent. But what I mean is that nothing about raising your voice is inherently violent.
Now, the real issue that I want to bring up is something that has been brought up multiple times concerning the Occupy Oakland movement: is vandalism violent? From the news coverage, and even the spoken words of many protesters, the assumption is that vandalism is in fact (always) violent. I want to challenge that idea a bit. Vandalism might hurt people financially, but to compare a company paying a couple of hundred dollars for a window to someone getting murdered seems a bit crass. Surely vandalism (such as hate speech and cross burning) can be parts of violence, but it is the threat, not the act that is violent.
Thought experiment: go out to the woods alone, and take a large window with you. When you are in a space that it is safe to do so, smash it. Don't tell anyone you did it. Did you just commit a violent act? If you don't think so, then it seems to follow that smashing windows isn't violent in and of itself. Therefore whether vandalism is violent is based on whether you do it to harm someone physically or emotionally. Vandalizing a bank might be a jerk move that is terrible PR for your organization, but no one is really thinking that the CEO of Chase is going to be heartbroken or scared for his life. Let alone physically hurt.
The interesting thing about it is, that by talking about vandalism like it is violence, we are basically saying that property and not alive objects are the same as people and animals. We say that harming either is the same class of action, we equal moral weight. It seems to be an aspect of our society that while we treat people like they are objects, we treat objects like humans deserve. In fact, if we had half as much respect for people as we did for corporations or physical property, then maybe we would be improving the world a bit.
What interests me about these protests right now is that they are almost universally non-violent. And there is the sentence that gets me hung up: I feel like what we think of as violence, especially in terms of political action, isn't really something people discuss very much. And that is certainly an important definition to come to some sort of agreement to, isn't it? I mean, sure we might not necessarily completely agree, but it seems odd to just think that everyone intuitively knows exactly what 'violence' means, and that we all share the same definition. If I've learned anything at all from what I've studied, it is that assuming people define things the same way as you is a one way ticket to cliched negative outcomes-ville.
"But Joel, surely violence is easy to understand. Why do we have to overanalyze EVERYTHING?" I might hear someone say. Well, first of all random rhetorical device: back off. Second, unless there is something that I am missing, I don't think that I can quite get a cohesive definition of violence from the people I'm listening to. I hear lots of things called violent that seem 'on the edge'; less often, I hear things that I just automatically think are not violent. Putting glitter on people against their will? I'm sorry, that is not violent in any way that does justice to the concept. But, I guess it might just be easier to talk about what is intuitively violent first and then try to see how far we can expand those borders.
I think we can all agree that unprovokedly physically harming someone else is violent. Well, maybe politicians can't, but I try not to associate with people who lead countries into preemptive war. At the very least, we can say that a person who shoots someone else, or conspires to murder, or even mugs another, is committing a violent act.
I'm a pacifist, so I'm also going to include self defense as a violent act. Now, hear me out, because most people think that this is not legitimate. I'm not saying that a person who is defending themselves is equally morally culpable as the person who first initiated violence, but I am saying that self defense is a violent act. Not all acts of violence are equal to each other in terms of moral culpability.
Does causing mental harm constitute as violence? There are cases where it does seem to be violent. Assault, death threats, other such things seem as violent and harmful as any kick in the gut. The torment of bullying can in many cases be worse in the long run for the person being bullied than simple physical harm. Emotional violence has a way of being adopted by the victim, and that can be a much worse consequence than broken bones.
Of course, right now I'm just focusing on things that are done intentionally. The question of unintentional actions is so complicated that I don't even know what to do with it. I might look at it later, but for now we can stick with something a bit easier to discuss.
I also want to note that simple offense doesn't count as emotional violence. To use an example: a racist person might be distressed to have a person who is a minority move into their neighborhood. Does that make the person moving there violent? I don't think so. This is also something that might have to be looked at later: whether offense is just or not.
In any case, we're back to the idea of what is violent. Intentionally harming people physically or mentally is violent. Is throwing glitter on someone violent? I don't think that it quite reaches the levels of harm that I would call violence; that is to say, I don't see the harm. if maybe someone had a deathly fear of glitter, that might be violent. As the case is, it's merely a flashy way of telling someone you disagree.
Is Yelling violent? There are cases of it being violent, but there is nothing inherent to it to be violent. We yell over crowded streets, we even yell at someone when we are angry. That's not violent; the content of the yelling is what is violent. This is, of course, not universal: if you find someone who always reacts negatively to yelling, then using this to your advantage to harm them would be violent. But what I mean is that nothing about raising your voice is inherently violent.
Now, the real issue that I want to bring up is something that has been brought up multiple times concerning the Occupy Oakland movement: is vandalism violent? From the news coverage, and even the spoken words of many protesters, the assumption is that vandalism is in fact (always) violent. I want to challenge that idea a bit. Vandalism might hurt people financially, but to compare a company paying a couple of hundred dollars for a window to someone getting murdered seems a bit crass. Surely vandalism (such as hate speech and cross burning) can be parts of violence, but it is the threat, not the act that is violent.
Thought experiment: go out to the woods alone, and take a large window with you. When you are in a space that it is safe to do so, smash it. Don't tell anyone you did it. Did you just commit a violent act? If you don't think so, then it seems to follow that smashing windows isn't violent in and of itself. Therefore whether vandalism is violent is based on whether you do it to harm someone physically or emotionally. Vandalizing a bank might be a jerk move that is terrible PR for your organization, but no one is really thinking that the CEO of Chase is going to be heartbroken or scared for his life. Let alone physically hurt.
The interesting thing about it is, that by talking about vandalism like it is violence, we are basically saying that property and not alive objects are the same as people and animals. We say that harming either is the same class of action, we equal moral weight. It seems to be an aspect of our society that while we treat people like they are objects, we treat objects like humans deserve. In fact, if we had half as much respect for people as we did for corporations or physical property, then maybe we would be improving the world a bit.
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