…but I think I’m finally starting to understand.
Note: Links in this post may be affiliate links, which means I’ll receive a commission, at no extra charge to you, if you make a purchase through such a link. Learn more here.
I’ve noted before that I only recently became aware of transgender issues. I’m still less than halfway through The Transgender Studies Reader, three years after I started it. This is partly because I had to start over a couple times, once because I was reading too fast and once because I’d set it aside for too long and, in both cases, had retained too little. Now, I’m taking it more slowly, reading and taking notes on one work at a time between other things I’m reading. (To be fair, it’s long: it has over 700 pages, 7″ x 10″, in a small font.)
One thing I’ve learned is the importance of listening to what trans people say about their experience.
Writing that sentence feels strange, since it seems like it should be obvious. But it’s not. This is especially true now that trans people, and especially trans youth, have become fodder for the Right’s culture war. We should be listening to them; instead, we get news show panels composed of extemporizing cis folk. Trans people are rarely invited into the conversation.
That’s not new, of course. The first section of the Reader, which focuses on earlier research (or “research”), is filled with articles by psychologists and medical professionals explaining away trans experiences, rather than listening and understanding. The things that trans patients told them clashed with the paradigm, and were thus deemed invalid.
The same type of thing is happening now in state legislative bodies across the country as lawmakers write laws targeting trans youth, labeling them as confused — or, worse, “groomed.”
So, yes, it’s important to listen to trans people’s experiences. When we do, medical care improves; when we do, oppressive and dangerous bills are defeated.
But I also mean this in a deeper way, one that challenges the way we often do philosophy.
Trans scholars highlight the value and importance of their subjective experience in understanding and explaining the world. This challenges much of our scholarly (and medical, and legal) tradition, which spends a lot of energy excising experience in service of some generalizable “truth” (or, worse, “Truth”). Using experience for anything other than exemplary anecdote is seen to render claims less applicable, less objective — less academic, and thus less valid.
This is similar to a more obvious contradiction found in many newsrooms, which seek to increase representation by hiring a more diverse work force, but then demand that diverse workforce adhere to the alleged “objectivity” that the profession (unreasonably) demands. 1
I’ve come to understand that our philosophical, or journalistic, or political insistence on objectivity, or universality, and so on, not only silences trans people and shuts them out of the cultural conversation. It impoverishes our understanding of the world.
It took awhile for me to recognize the pattern as I worked my way through the Reader, and even longer to see that this pattern was a conscious and explicit rhetorical move: the writers often announce that they are about to draw on their personal experience, simultaneously anticipating, and defending themselves against, the criticism about injecting subjectivity into their argument.
But I’ve come to appreciate the importance and value of that philosophical move in, of all places, YouTube, as I’ve followed the channels (and become a patron through Patreon) of two trans women: Abigail Thorn, of Philosophy Tube; and Natalie Wynn, of ContraPoints.
Philosophy Tube
Thorn began her YouTube channel a decade ago, pre-transition, as a philosophy student in England. It started as a sort of protest when tuition shot up dramatically in the UK: her tagline is still, “I’m giving away a philosophy degree for free!” and she presents a range of properly philosophical topics (the meaning of art, stoicism, transhumanism) as well as applying philosophical rigor to current issues (effective altruism, violence and protest, capital punishment).
In almost every video, she draws on her experience as a trans woman. And whether she does so allusively or explicitly, in each case I have understood the issue she’s discussing more deeply because of that. Sometimes it’s simply a matter of understanding through example, but in many cases it’s a more emotional understanding, based on empathy.
I would describe her videos as theatrical lectures. She speaks to the camera; her clarity and focus show that her presentation is scripted (though not stilted), and she puts footnotes on screen. But she presents these lectures in costume — often several costumes, each appropriate to a character, and some of them quite wild: her latest video has her in … well, I think I’m accurate to call it a yellow latex, caution-tape bikini.
That theatricality isn’t an accident, either. She’s also an actress and, now, an award-winning playwright: last year, she wrote and performed the lead role in an Off West End play called The Prince, which won an “Offie.” I actually subscribed to Nebula so that I could see the (professionally produced) video version of the play, and I wasn’t disappointed: it’s the story of characters in Shakespeare’s plays discovering that they are, in fact, playing roles. It could have been heavy handed, and it could have been hyper-focused on trans experience. It wasn’t either of those things, though; instead, her trans experience informs a larger inquiry into the roles that we all play.
Said another way, to emphasize the point I’m making: the way she incorporates her experience as a transgender woman into her work deepens the play — the humor, the emotional impact, the “message.” (I put “message” in quotes because, while it’s not a didactic play, it does follow Horace’s dictum for poetry and drama: to instruct and delight.)
I will just add that her coming out video — Coming Out as Trans – A Little Public Statement — taught me more about trans issues and experience than anything I’ve come across. It’s not her (or any trans person’s) responsibility to educate me, but I appreciate that she does.
ContraPoints
Wynn was actually the first of the two that I stumbled across in my YouTube rabbit-holery. She’s a bit more irreverent than Thorn — a bit edgier, and generally more experimental (though I’ve recently seen some older Philosophy Tube videos that were in the same ballpark). Where Thorn’s mode leans toward lecture (though theatrical), Wynn is more likely to create characters that represent various positions in an argument and have them hash it out. And where Thorn’s primary focus is philosophy, which may spill over into social issues, Wynn is more of a cultural critic who draws on philosophy as a tool for her critique.
I’m not sure how her channel started, but when I first encountered her, a few years back, her videos tackled the arguments of what we’d now call the alt-right. These weren’t “take-down” videos, though; she wasn’t preaching to the converted. She addressed the men, treating their arguments seriously — and, apparently, she had some influence; her “boys” (she started many of those old videos with, “Hello, boys!”) seemed to respond well to her. (Well, some of them; I recently heard her talk about the abuse that she, like any woman with an opinion on the Internet, has to put up with.)
She’s removed those earlier videos now — I think I heard her say that they don’t represent where she is now. I respect that, though I’ll admit I kind of miss them. I enjoyed the way she put arguments “on their feet,” so to speak, with distinct characters that debated issues, especially around gender or gender identity. She gave even bad-faith arguments a fairer hearing than I thought they deserved (she still does this), and presented a range of subtle and complex responses that forced me to think in ways I’d not thunk before. Really strong work.
If you haven’t seen these YouTubers (or even if you have), I recommend following them. Since their productions are fairly elaborate, they don’t release videos often, so if you subscribe to their channels, you won’t be overwhelmed.
And if you enjoy their YouTube channel, you might enjoy their presence on Patreon as well. Wynn records monthly “Tangents” on her Patreon — less formal or theatrical (but still well researched and deep) presentations that take on topics that her patrons vote on. And Thorn’s Patreon focuses more on behind-the-scenes photos and live-streamed “post-mortems” of each video after it’s released.
So: I still have a lot to learn. I am learning, though. And much of that is thanks to the generosity of these two YouTubers.
Top photo by Malik Skydsgaard on Unsplash
- In a presentation to the Eisenhower Foundation, NYU Journalism professor Jay Rosen put explained the contradiction like this:
And the contradiction is this: if we hire more African-Americans into the newsroom, it has to be because we think their perspective is valuable, their voice is needed, that’s the whole logic of it. We need what you know, we need your background, we need your insights, we need your outlook.
But when they get there, they find a system in which that is exactly what should be bleached out of the news. Your personal background, your personal voice, your personal perspective — because of the de-voicing of American journalism.
http://www.eisenhowerfoundation.org/docs/Rosen_MF_21%20Feb%2007.pdf