A Quickie on Antipsychiatry

Bonnie Burstow is a professor at the University of Toronto's pit of vipers called 'Ontario Institute of Studies in Education' (OISE). She is prolific author, researcher, 'professional feminist psychotherapist', and is considered to be one of the world's leaning anti-psychiatry theorists - I suppose this bodes poorly for the plucky little discipline.  

This may seem like a odd thing to worry about. After all, anti-psychiatry isn't taken too seriously outside of Scientology, but... The University of Toronto has offered the first ever scholarship in Anti-psychiatry Studies up to $50,000, annually since 2016. This is funding of activism, and the fundamental assumptions of the activism are incoherent and flawed in numerous ways.

Burstow and her ilk partake in the dubious, though well-meaning enterprise of anti-psychiatric activism which took off in the 1960's with the work of Michel Foucault and Thomas Szasz, among others. 

Following in the footsteps of such thinkers, Burstow attempts to problematise the medical concept of 'mental illness' by stating that 'illness' is a term denoting anomalous physicality, while mental denotes processes of the mind which are not physical. So, the mental, which is not physical, is being used as though it were physical, and this is incorrect; a ‘bizarre use of language’ - a metaphor. 

The criticism of linguistic sloppiness is fine and all, but I think the distinction being drawn between the mental and physical is too simplistic and, as such, results in a host of further issues.

While arguing that 'mental illness' is a mistaken term because the mental is non-physical and illnesses only affect the physical, Burstow will say that we ought to think of the mind as a verb. It is a verb that has been reified into an object, an object that is then studied by experts who impose their own morality on the individual possessing the mind under investigation. To Burstow, the mind is an activity of the brain. That's a fair position to hold, but if it is an activity of the brain, then why can there not be illnesses of the mind? I see no reason why not.

There is a spectrum of illnesses, diseases and disorders that there are recognised to have biological and psychological components – influenza and syphilis are but two examples. In fact, there is a lot of work going on regarding how to identify and address illness with some prominent researchers stating that mental disorders need to be addressed as disorders of distributed brain systems with symptoms forged by developmental and social experiences. It is also recognised that environment and social experiences play a large role in the development of a human being and these effect gene expression. So, there is a lot of intermixing of the brain and the mind, as it were. I think that a lot of the nuance is being left out here, and I think that has to do with a conception of strong dualism between the mind and body, a position that isn’t all that tenable now given the onslaught of scientific and philosophical arguments and evidence.

An other, and truly bizarre argument from Burstow and other is what I call 'the Argument from the Corpse'. In this argument, Burstow states that illnesses of the body have symptoms and effects that linger in the sufferer's body after death - when a person dies of cancer, the cancerous cells are still present, for instance. Since she knows this, she asks where does schizophrenia go when a schizophrenic dies? This is supposed to be some kind of refutation of the reality of mental illness since mental illness, if they were illnesses as she conceives of them, would remain in the body.

This is baffling because one can ask, 'OK, where does the mind go after death?' Is the absence of mentality after death a refutation of the existence of the mind? Even if she were to bite the bullet and go full epiphenomenalist - holding the position that the mind is non-physical and it exists, but doesn't do anything; like the heat coming off of a computer - then she’d still be in hot water because the barrier between the physical and mental would be obliterated, and thus mental illnesses would just be illnesses of the brain. Sure, but then she is just arguing semantics and it doesn't amount to a substantive criticism of psychiatry.

This is an affront to science, philosophy and the medical research into mental disorders. Science and philosophy are supposed to represent us at our epistemic best, and the activism of folks like Burstow are hardly up to the task of mounting a full-throated and detailed attack on the fundamentals and principles of the psychiatric disciplines. At best these arguments are committing the genetic fallacy and at worst are committing category errors. In either case, the scholarship is a disgrace and a sign of the anti-science Left's seeping into the academy ever the more so. 

Foucault and the Problem of Power

The problem of power. This sentence really has two meanings. The first, and perhaps more plain meaning is that power and systems of control and domination are problematic in that they can unfairly constrain action. The second: it is just difficult to adequately talk about power. What is it? How does it work? There has been a hot of hot air spoken about 'power', and it takes on almost an occult-like meaning (and Foucault is partly to blame for this). I do think, however, that one can make sense of power, specifically Foucault's use of the term, and speak more sensibly about it. However, in order to address the first problem of power, I must attend to the second, and I will do so now.

What exactly is 'power'? It is absolutely fundamental to Foucault's project, but its nature is not clearly stated. He states that 'power is everywhere: not that it engulfs everything, but that it comes from everywhere... power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society' (Foucault, 1990, p. 93), so in this sense is not merely agentic or structural. However, Foucault also states, 'power exists only when put into action' (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1983, p. 219). So, how are we to make sense of these seemingly irreconcilable statements? First, it would be erroneous to look at these statements ahistorically. There was a trajectory to Foucault's project and he changed his mind on certain points (for instance, the large breaks or discontinuities between different epistemes, or paradigms, was gradually replaced by a subtler continuity between epochs of thought). So, this apparent inconsistency between these two statements may indeed be only an illustration of Foucault changing his mind, however, I think there is more to it than that. I think that these two statements extend one another - they point to two different ways in which power is exercised and operates. This I will illustrate and explain through an exegesis and interpretation of Foucault's work on power.

Given these assertions that i) 'power comes from everywhere...', ii) 'power exists only when put into action', and iii) 'power is... [a] cluster of relations', we have what appears to the beginnings of a formulation of an idea of 'power'. These three statements, I think, can be described as referring to three different ways in which power, as Foucault understood it, can be exercised. Respectively, (i) refers to society and its norms, (ii) refers to intentional action, and (iii) refers to discursive systems.

It is suggested by these statements that power can only be exercised in a state of relation. It gets put into action, and only then can its effects be made present. But the fact that power can only be exercised in relations presupposes that the ability to exercise power is already present prior to the relation. At this point, I think that it will prove useful to introduce some of the thoughts of John Searle that he explores in his books, Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization (2010), and Freedom and Neurobiology: Reflections on Free Will, Language, and Political Power (2007). In doing so, I aim to augment this investigation of Foucault, since I see Searle as a contributor to this topic.

In these two books, Searle argues that the existence of power has to be separated from what is it usually confused with: its exercise. Power is an ability, a disposition or a force that is able to be exerted. However, that ability exists prior to its exercise, and it can exist without ever having been exercised (Searle, 2010, p. 145). 

What exactly is this ability? It can be any ability inherent to the entity that possesses it. For instance, one's car has the ability to be driven at top speed even if one never does so, and the Prime Minister has certain abilities that he may never exercise, ie dissolving parliament. So, the existence of power is to be separated from its exercise, and the existence of the ability is prior to its exercise

1) Existence of Power: the ability A that X has which enables X to do some particular action Y.

Though this general notion of power as 'ability to do something' can apply to a vast array of entities, the certain kind of power that is of concern here is social or political power - the power that human beings have over other human beings. This sort of power differs from that of the car engine in that human who exercise such power do so in order create possibilities and opportunities in order realise ulterior purposes. This sort of power is a specific form of social reality which forms much of our institutional reality. In order to see how this works, specifically regarding Foucauldian notions of power, a key term that must be explored: 'discourse'.

Discourse is a murky term in Foucault. In fact it is not until the near end of his Archaeology of Knowledge (1972) that he gives discourse something of a definition, namely '[it is] an entity of sequences of signs in that they are enouncements (statements)' and that '...[it can be described as] a certain way of speaking...'(Foucault, 2002A, p. 121, 213). This 'way of speaking' constitutes relations between signs and objects, subjects and other statements in a more or less formal way through the 'accepted concepts, legitimised subjects, taken-for-granted objects, and preferred strategies, which yield justified truth claims' (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1983, p. xxiv).

At its core, this account states that institutional facts are products of speech acts that assign status functions to certain things (objects, or states of affairs). According to Foucault, the relationship between discourse and institutional reality is at times circular and constitutive. For instance, say a couple gets married in a church. At the end of the ceremony, the priest declares 'I now pronounce you man and wife'. This speech act uttered by the priest performs the function of marrying the couple, but not by itself. The speech act itself has its meanings but meaning alone is not enough to get people married. I, for instance, cannot walk down the street saying 'I now pronounce you husband and wife' to passersby and have them become thus married. Additionally, intentionality is not enough. I could sincerely want to have people get married every time I say, 'I now pronounce you husband and wife', but that will not work. This certain declarative speech act only has the power to function marry people, and thus create a social fact, if the right person says it, and for a person to be 'the right' person, they also must be recognised to be so. So, in the case of the priest, he can create the institutional fact of marriage because he was declared a priest when he was inaugurated by a bishop, and thus given the authority to perform such an exercise. The people participating in the marriage recognise the authority of the priest to perform such an act and assent to the proceedings.

This example illustrates the constitutive and circular nature of the relationship between discourse and institutions as certain statements are only 'constituted as serious by the current rules of a specific truth game in which they have a role' (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1983, p. 54). So, the discursive practices (such as speech acts, and ceremonies) can constitute institutional facts (like marriage), however, the continuing practice of the institution of marriage reinforces the already existing discursive practices (Foucault, 2002A, p. 120-124). This is can be formulated in the Searlean terms: X counts as Y in context C.

In the case of marriage, within the context C (a religious ceremony), the phenomenon X (the couple) has the symbolic status Y (being married). So, institutional and social facts are created via speech acts and these speech acts in embedded in certain discourses (ie: marriage, eligibility, religiosity, etc). But how does this relate to the exercise of power?

Power via discourse is not necessarily the enforcement of prohibitions but is also the expression of language and practices that obey certain rules which have been created by particular cultural conditions, rules and expectations that have been laid out by those very institutions. This has been demonstrated in the marriage example.

According to Foucault, discourses are formulated by our use of language, and we often fail to realise the ways in which our own language community constitutes what we talk about. Our language practices are arbitrary and yet have become second nature to us, and as such, without knowing it, we group similar objects, separate distinguishable ones, and thus constitute categories and its members (ie, race, gender, worker, et cetera).

An object is constituted by what Foucault calls, a 'unity of discourse'. The unity of discourse on a particular object 'would be the interplay of rules that define the transformation of these objects, their non-identity through time, the break produced in them, the internal discontinuity that suspends their permanence' (Foucault, 2002A, p. 36). To make sense out of this idea, let's take 'madness'. 

For instance, we constitute the object of 'madness' by a set of rules that allows us to say that one is 'mad' (or not) together with the interplay of rules that defines the madness as dissolved (cures, treatment, rehabilitation). The key point that Foucault is making here is that the unity of discourses on madness, for instance, would not be based upon the existence of the object 'madness' itself; it is not something that was waiting 'out there' in the world for us to discover it, but rather it would be the resultant categorisation of the rules and practices that make possible the appearance of objects during a given period of time and the practices that obey and constitute such rules. To elaborate further, Foucault thinks that discourses play the role of 'legitimating' power by emphasising the construction of current 'truths' and they are maintained by what power relations they carry with them. The objects that have been constituted by the unity of discourse embody the ideas of the discourse, and the reflection of those ideas within the object perpetuate the discourse.

[For instance, a] factory is not an inert pile of bricks, wood, and metal. It incorporates or actualizes schemas....The factory gate, the punching-in station, the design of the assembly line: all of these features of the factory teach and validate the rules of the capitalist labor contract...In short, if resources are instantiations or embodiments of schemas, they therefore inculcate and justify the schemas as well...Sets of schemas and resources may properly be said to constitute structures only when they mutually imply and sustain each other over time (Sewell, 1992 in Haslanger, 2011, p. 194).

The surprising conclusion that Foucault arrived at was that individuals, like objects, are so constituted. Individuals, like objects, are constituted by discourses because individuals in language communities are categorised and shaped, but unlike objects, behave, according to the background assumptions generated by the discourses.

The idea behind Foucault's account is that for someone to be 'mad', for instance, that person must be in a community wherein people have a concept of 'madness' and also regard that person as falling within the bounds of that concept. As stated above, people are divided by the concepts of their language community, but they are not divided by the concept, per se. There must be individuals who use the concept to divide (Root, 2002, p. S632, fn.5).

This can be formulated as such:

(2) Discursive Division: Category K divides people iff they divide themselves by K. Furthermore, madness M is a K iff it is used to divide people at a site S. A person is M at site S iff M is used by people to divide people at site S.

Categories that are used to divide people can imbue those people with certain abilities that can be enacted in certain ways. This is not meant to sound mysterious. If, at site S, in context C, a person Y satisfies the constraints needed to fulfill a category K, which is used to divide people.    

According to Foucault, this is an exercise of power and it is not something that can be owned, but rather something that is manifested in a certain way:

Power must be analyzed as something which circulates, or as something which only functions in the form of a chain . . . Power is employed and exercised through a net-like organization . . . Individuals are the vehicles of power, not its points of application (Foucault, 2003, p. 29). 

I’d augment this above quote slightly to read, ‘Individuals are the vehicles of power, not [only] its points of application’. This provides some added clarity by removing the occult-like suggestiveness and bridges the gap between individual exercises of power and the aggregate discursive practices.

With all the above facets in mind, it appears that a Foucauldian understanding of Power is a capacity or force, and it is exercised in various ways in order for one person or persons to make another person or persons do something. Power relations are the strategies that individuals use to control the conduct of others (Foucault, 1997, p. 298). Given this, the formulation is as follows:  

(3) Exercise of Power: A exercises power over B if A affects B in a significant manner (ie, making B do/want something that B would not have otherwise done/wanted) in context C. 

For example, a parent A exercises power over his or her child B when A orders/scolds/rewards B in order that the child behave in a way that is appreciated by the parent. It is important to note that A can exercise power over B even if A is not successful in achieving their goal. For instance, a parent can still exercise power over their child even if the child does not comply with the requests, orders, or scolding by the parent. This is because A can exercise power over B under one description, and then that exercise of power can have unintended consequences. Those unintended effects of the initial exercise of power can be acted upon, and perpetrated, and thus power is being exercised unintentionally with regards to that effect.

As stated at the outset, there are three rather mysterious Foucauldian statements: i) 'power comes from everywhere...', ii) 'power exists only when put into action', and iii) 'power is... [a] cluster of relations'. Given what has been stated thus far, I think that it is now the case that certain formulations of Foucauldian notions of power can be made to address each of these claims.

The most mysterious one is (i) 'power comes from everywhere...' How are we to make sense of this? It cannot literally mean that power, and specifically social/political power, the power that people have to make others do something comes from all things and all spaces. I think that this rather mysterious sentence is referring to something like 'social pressure'. This pressure to conform to the norms of society is exercised constantly so that one conforms to the norms. And even if one does not wish to transgress the norms of society, one will still feel the force of that power. The power that would be exercised against a transgressor lies dormant - this is because if power is the ability to get someone to do something whether or not they want to do it, and one has that ability whether or not they ever use it, then it is latent. This dormancy, or latency is, seemingly, a part of its very ability to affect others – it acts as a threat (Searle, 2010, p. 156-158). For instance, if I wished to walk down the street naked, I would immediately experience the social sanctions that would be thrust upon me as a result of my transgression against the 'wearing clothes in public' norm. However, perhaps if we were not pressured to conform to such a norm, as some people do (nudists, and 'naturalists'), then, perhaps, we would not do what we currently do, which is abide by the norm.

The second statement 'power exists only when put into action'. This sentence can be interpreted as referring to the exercise of power. Power is an ability, but the exercise of power is having that ability be manifested. This may seem at odds with the above notion of dormant social pressure, however, as stated previously, power can be exercised under one description, however, that exercise can have unintended effects. So, power exists when it is put into action, however, it can be put into action unconsciously.

Thirdly, 'power is... [a] cluster of relations'. Power is 'integrated into a disparate  field  of possibilities brought to bear upon permanent structures' (Foucault, 1983, p. 219). Power cannot be exercised in isolation. There have to be two actors that form a network for power to be exercised. These relations form a web into which we are locked. Our lives are infused in invisible systems of power. These systems are formed through combinations of discourses, institutions, common practices, shared backgrounds and understandings, et cetera. It is through this sort of web of institutions, meanings, practices et cetera that humans can exercise power over other humans.

References:


Dreyfus, Hubert L., and Paul Rabinow. Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Routledge, 1983.

Foucault, Michel. An Introduction. Vol. 1 of History Sexuality. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1990.

_____________. Archaeology of Knowledge. Translated by A.M. Sheridan Smith. New York, NY: Routledge, 2002A.

_____________. Society Must Be Defended. Edited by David Macey. Translated by Mauro Bertani and Alessandro Fontana. Lectures at the Collège de France 1975-1976. New York, NY: Picador, 2003.

Haslanger, Sally. "Ideology, Generics, and Common Ground." In Feminist Metaphysics: Explorations in the Ontology of Sex, Gender and the Self, edited by Charlotte Witt, 179-207. New York, NY: Springer, 2011.

Searle, John. Freedom and Neurobiology: Reflections on Free Will, Language, and Political Power. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2007.

___________ Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Fascism: Those Who Use It, and Those Who Abuse It

Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes. It would be so much easier for us, if there appeared on the scene somebody saying, ‘I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Blackshirts to parade again in the Italian squares’. Life is not that simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and point the finger at any of its new instances – every day and in every part of the world.

         Umberto Eco, ‘Ur-Fascism’

...[T]he major enemy, the strategic adversary is fascism. And not only historical fascism, the fascism of Hitler and Mussolini — which was able to mobilize and use the desire of the masses so effectively — but also the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us.

       Michel Foucault, 'Anti-Oedipus'

The next wave of fascists will not come with cattle cars and concentration camps, but they'll come with a smiley face and maybe a TV show.... That’s how the 21st-century fascists will essentially take over.

       Michael Moore, 'Paraphrasing Bertram Gross, "Friendly Fascism"'

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'Bashing the fash' is all the rage these days, and surely these statements stir up feelings of righteous vigilance in the hearts of the defenders of freedom, but what do we learn from such clarion calls to resistance? From what I can see, they tell us next to nothing about fascism save for a brief historical catalogue of perpetrators and sins, and give vague warnings about its possible emergence from the mists of the future. In fact, what such statements tell us is that the speaker is willing to use and abuse the moral weight of fascism and its history to score political virtue points against some opponent or other. I think such moves are, at best, eye-rollers, but are usually beneath contempt, and given how cynically thrown around 'fascist' is these days, and given how seriously effective its stain has become, I will deflate such incantations' pretensions to moral superiority by demonstrating the dishonesty of their content. 

All three statements and their variants fall prey to a cardinal sin of serious inquiry: unfalsifiability coupled with a blatant appeal to emotion. First, lets deal with falsifiability.

If one is to have fruitful examination into an issue, it must, in principle, be falsifiable; there must be some evidence that could, in theory, prove it wrong. Regarding the three above speakers, what could prove their claims wrong? If fascism is in 'all of us' and can come with a 'TV show and smile' whilst dressed in 'plainclothes', and thereby be sufficiently disguised from identification, how could we identify ‘real’ fascist movements from myriad other political movements? Are we to point to those political movements that most resemble our conception of fascism, or should we look to the ones that least resemble it? And how much of our conception of fascism is to be linked to the historical cases?

To Eco and his ilk, what are we to say about movements that exhibit superficial characteristics of fascism (mass rallies, nationalism) but lack some fundamental characteristics (palingenesis, totalitarianism)? This is important since the explosion of nationalist populist movements in the Western world is often met with claims of ‘fascism’.

To my mind, it appears that for the sufficiently-committed (read: ideologically rigid) there wouldn’t be any evidence to contradict these claims. If one were to point out that such-and-such a movement is lacking some key fascist element or other, one may well be met with the response, ‘Well, they’re hiding their true intentions. They are putting on a veneer of respectability and intellectualism so as to propagate their ideas. It's a Trojan horse.’ This is the kind of reasoning that is endemic to conspiracy theories and has no place in real intellectual discussion, however, this is baked into Moore's claim about so-called 'friendly fascism', but such reasoning gets one onto some thin ice.

If we’re to believe that fascism won’t come to 21st century America with concentration camps, then how are we to assess the violence and internment that is perpetrated in 21st century America? For instance, the media and numerous politicians have stated that the separation of families at the US-Mexico border by US border control is ‘inhuman’, ‘dehumanising’, ‘child abuse’ and ‘racist’, and that the children are being kept in 'concentration camps'. In fact, for Moore’s latest documentary, ‘Fahrenheit 11/9’, wherein he takes on Trump and myriad other disconnected faults of American capitalism, he interviewed Ben Ferencz, the last living Nuremberg prosecutor who had called the child separation policy a ‘crime against humanity’.

So, how are we to assess the situation at the border? Based on Moore's logic: since fascism will not come to the US with concentration camps, then the presence of concentration camps wouldn't count as evidence of fascism. Praise the Lord! But he cannot mean that since he uses concentration camp imagery to accompany his assessment of the border situation - thereby deliberately equating the two! So, he is either lazy or disingenuous, and means to only pluck at heart strings.
 
This emotional rhetoric is made most explicit with the Foucauldian statement, who is playing a game with our classification of 'fascism' and the emotional weight that its connotation bears. He, like Eco, recognises that fascism has a historical component that was embodied in the mobilisations of Hitler and Mussolini, but he also states there is this deeper 'fascism' - this primordial libidinal impulse that seeks domination, and resides 'in us all'. The problem with Foucault, here, is that his claim contains emotional rhetoric that exploits a switch between a necessary condition for a sufficient condition. In doing so, Foucault's claim is either trivial and true, or radical and false.

The trivial truth is merely that us humans have inclinations to aggression and, at times, control over others. The exciting falsehood that can trade here is the notion that our aggression telescopes into the totalitarian political machinations of right-wing extremism. 

In his phrase, he first makes use of the word in its redefined sense, then presents the redefinition as if it had already been established as the deeper content of the concept. By stating that 'the enemy is NOT JUST the fascism of Hitler and Mussolini, but that impulse that lies underneath of pretentiously civilised veneer', he is smuggling in the vehement repugnance that is associated with the horrors of Hitler and Mussolini. We may be able to forgive the melodrama since Foucault was very French, and was writing this in 1973, however, we cannot forgive the rhetorical strategy of equivocation, circularity, and argumentum ad passiones.

Foucault's take on the matter appears to invite the surest vigilance, as we must even suspect ourselves as being harbingers of potential genocide and violence. After all, if it could happen to the Good Germans, then why couldn't it happen to you or me or us? But while violence and aggression are necessary conditions for fascism, they are not sufficient, and by trying to up the ante by stating 'fascism' is in all of us because we all have aggressive, myopic and egotistic tendencies, Foucault is trivializing one of the most important and brutal epochs of our species.

I took the time to criticise all three of these cases because all three, in one way or other, are echoed throughout the media around the world. These criticisms and vague warnings are being slung at Trump and his supporters, and a whole slew of populist movements that are popping up around the West, and instead of attempting to understand why people are drawn to such movements, they're being demonised through association with past devils. This is not to be taken as an endorsement of these movements, nor that they're beyond reproach, but I think that the criticisms are crude emotional manipulations that are uninhibited by reality.

Our societies depend on an ecology of reasonable public discourse, and if you're undermining that ecology by angrily shouting down everyone who disagrees with you as a 'fascist', you're inviting fascism not fighting it.

Objects of Desire, Transgenderism, and Disclosure

There has been some public discussion about transgender people and whether they have a duty to disclose their transgender status to their prospective romantic/sexual partner. There appear to be a growing number of folks saying that trans-people shouldn't have to disclose, and I completely disagree.

First, I'll give a sketch of the opposing and affirmative arguments before moving on to my critique.

The gist of the arguments against obligatory disclosure is something like this:

One of the transgender movement’s goals has been to allow individuals to decide for him or herself whether he or she identifies as male or female, or ‘elsewhere’ on the androgynous spectrum of sex and gender. Given this insistence on individual choice, the imposition of a moral duty on trans-people to disclose their transgender status to potential partners is to prioritise a cis-gendered conception of that trans-person’s identity (i.e. as a man, because the trans-person was assigned male at birth) over that trans-person’s own conception of their identity (i.e. as a woman). This is cis-normativity – the assumption and privileging of the world view that men and women are two distinct and mutually exclusive categories – and this disrespects the rights of transgender persons to self-identify.

And the gist of the arguments for disclosure is as follows:

In sexual intimacy, the right not to associate trumps the right to associate (this is most obvious in terms of consent). The person who wants or doesn’t want to have sex with someone of the same sex or opposite sex has the right to make up their own mind as to whether the potential partner ‘counts’ as a man or a woman – and knowing about the partner’s assigned birth sex or the extent of the transition is informative in that decision. 

When the above argument against is made, usually it is met with charges of transphobia. I personally think that transphobes should still be allowed to be transphobes, and just because one is transphobic doesn’t mean that they should be having sex with trans-people against their will - either by willful deception or lies of omission. 

I think that there is another issue that is neglected, here, and its neglect allows for some false assumptions and quick arguments to be made which, ultimately, end up being guilt-trips. The issue has to do with a person's object of desire.

Now, the issue with a lot of post-modern social justice stuff is a confusion on the part of such thinkers between the relationship between the world, words, and the mind, and the ‘world altering’ capacities of speech. To them, speech and language are primary - and we're to believe this because we think and communicate through linguistic signs, and since our experiences with each other and the world are so mediated through those signs, and all of their constituent contingencies, we cannot hope to 'get at' the world in a fully accurate sense.

We speak and act in ways that relate to the world all the time, and the ways in which we relate to the world are facilitated through our mental states (beliefs, desires, perceptions, and intentions). Our mental states can be divided up into two categories:

I. States that currently exist,

II. States that are yet to exist.

Mental states of type I are belief, and depict the world as being in a state that is held in that belief. Such a state is said to have a mind-to-world relation, or direction of fit. 

So, a belief depicts the world as being in a state such that the belief is true. A belief is satisfied when it fits the world. Beliefs concern with facts.

Mental states of type II are desires and expresses a yet-to-be-realised state that matches the desire. Such a state is said to have a world-to-mind relation, or direction of fit. 

So, a desire expresses a wish that the world be such that the desire is true. A desire is satisfied when the world fits it. Desires concern with what is to be brought about.

In short, the mind-to-world relation of beliefs is about getting the words (more strictly their propositional content) to match the world, whereas the world-to-mind relation of desires is about getting the world to match the words (propositional content).

So, what does this have to do with transgender disclosure in intimate scenarios? 

I think it has everything to do with it. First, I think that beliefs and desires are integral to our behaviour, and to not adequately account for those in the pursuit of explaining human social  phenomena is to miss the boat entirely. Secondly, there probably no arena more complicated than sex wherein beliefs and desires play a significant role, and so we should take that seriously. There is usually a rejoinder to the insistence on trans disclosure.

In a case where a heterosexual man says that he is only attracted to biological women, and so trans-women don’t cut it since they’re not biological women, the response is usually: ‘so you are a man who is solely attracted to 'woman with vaginas', and one day you see a woman - who unbeknownst to you is a trans-woman - and you think she is attractive. Are you not attracted to a trans-woman? It seems like you are since you felt attraction to a trans-woman, and since trans-women are ‘women’, I fail to see the difference, here’

I think this misses the key point.

The question is about a man who is solely attracted to ‘women with vaginas’ experiencing attraction to a trans-woman (without a 'vagina' - to add further fuel to the fire: post-op trans-women still don't have vaginas, but a facsimile of one). Unless that man knew that the person he was feeling attraction towards was trans, then he wouldn’t be feeling attraction to a trans-woman as a whole. I think that he’d be feeling attraction to the characteristics he is attracted to that are being projected on the body of a trans-woman. In short, he'd be feeling attraction to what he thought was a woman. 

To make this clearer, I hope, here is an analogy: say a man is walking down the street and sees a young female approaching him. She is, by his lights, a beautiful young woman with all the sexual characteristics he is attracted to. They start up a conversation and he finds out that she is 15. Once he finds this out, he politely ceases the conversation. She’s far too young for him. 

Now, was this man attracted to a 15 year old girl? I do not think so. I think that he was attracted to the typical female mature sexual characteristics that happened to be broadcast on the body of a 15 year old girl. Sexual attraction is not merely a set of feelings: they’re feelings that are directed at a certain thing: men, women, animals, inanimate objects: anything under the Sun…. including the Sun. Surely people can be attracted to trans-people. Some trans-folks pass well enough for some. Some folks may not even care about passing. That said, I fail to see how a heterosexual male, for example, a biological male who is attracted to biological females, is a bigot because that male won’t date a biological male who broadcasts facsimiles of the sexual characteristics of a female.

In this scenario, the man couldn't have been attracted to the 15 year old girl because the 15 year old girl was not what he desired, nor was she what he had initially believed her to be (an attractive adult woman). 

In such a case, and I take this to be analogous for the trans-disclosure issue, the belief was false: it depicted the world as being in such-and-such a state, but that belief wasn't satisfied because it didn't fit the world. (The 15 year old girl was not an attractive adult woman). 

For the man's desire, it certainly expressed a yet-to-be-realised state of affairs that matched the desire, but it also wasn't satisfied since the world didn't fit it. (He didn't desire a 15 year old girl, but an attractive adult woman). 

Now, the same goes for the transgender scenario. Certainly advocates would call such people transphobic, but that doesn't mean these people are actually attracted to trans-people but just won't admit it to themselves, in fact, it'd be the opposite, and it certainly doesn't mean that trans-folks are owed any sexual duties from them since the right to not associate always trumps the right to associate. 

The arguments from the trans-advocates regarding disclosure are essentially attempts at guilt tripping others into sleeping with trans-people, and if they cannot convince someone, then they revert to the ad hominem, 'transphobe'. This strikes me as quite odd given the insistence on consent and it's primacy, as well as the notion that it can be withdrawn at anytime and for any reason. No one should be forced to do anything that they don't wish to. Consent has to be affirmative and enthusiastic, etc. 

Fine, then. Here's some sex advice: if you don't want to have sex with someone because you don't like their face, the way they talk or walk, their political stances or taste in music: don't. Having sex with someone for social justice is never, ever, obligatory. 

Sex is Binary: The Debate

In this debate, there are three categories: Biological sex, Gender Expression, and Gender Identity. 

To get the definitions out of the way: Biological sex is one’s reproductive system and secondary sex characteristics. Gender expression is one’s behaviour, mannerisms, and appearance that one associates with one’s gender. Gender identity is one’s personal sense of one’s own gender. These categories are said to exist across a spectrum between male and female with their corresponding traits being masculine and feminine. What is being debated is a) the naturalness of the categories 'male' and 'female', and b) how innate the traits of 'masculine' and 'feminine' are, and can they be changed over the course of a person’s life.

The social constructionist position is that 'male' and 'female' are not natural categories, nor are their corresponding gender traits innate. Their argument goes something like this:

Males and Females are commonly thought of as two discrete and mutually exclusive kinds that are constituted by immutable biological traits that are identifiable at or before birth. This is called the gender binary. These immutable traits lead one to be assigned as ‘male’ or ‘female’ at or before birth, and once assigned such a label, a series of developmental, temperamental and societal expectations are imposed upon the child and remain throughout life. This perpetuates the gender binary. There are, however, reasons to deny the gender binary and the theory of gender it is based on.

First: even though a person was assigned 'male' at birth, that person's anatomy could fall 'in between' or 'outside of' the typical male body because the underlying biological circuitry doesn't always obey the XX/XY binary – there are a host of hormonal and endocrine conditions that nudge people out of the standard gender binary box. In less overt cases, we also see more or less androgynous people who exist and exhibit a mixture of female and male physical traits: there are tall and muscular women and short and delicate men. Secondly, not only can the biological traits be atypically distributed across the biological sexes, we also know that biological traits (sex organs, secondary sex characteristics) can be removed, altered, and replaced via surgery and/or hormonal administration. Finally, stereotypically male and female behaviours, attitudes, and dispositions are not constrained to only males and females. There are men who exhibit female-typical behavioural traits and vice versa.

In conclusion, the idea that males and females are two discrete and mutually exclusive kinds that are differentiated by immutable biological traits identifiable at or before birth is false. Those traits are not immutable and can be changed, and traits typically associated with one gender can even be exhibited in the opposite gender. Given that there is no strict demarcation between ‘male’ and ‘female’ traits, most of us are hybrids on the male-female spectrum. Since the gender binary is false, the enforcement of the gender binary and its reification through biological sex is harmful and given the oppression that atypical members of their gender face, we should work to abolish the gender stereotypes so as to free up people to live and express themselves as they see fit.

Given that biological sex has been unanchored from biological determinants, it then follows that the gender roles and gender identities associated with those biological sexes are unmoored as well, to float freely in the world.

Now, it is true that science does show us that we are on something of a spectrum – biologically and psychologically.  So, where does the social constructionist's position go wrong?  It goes wrong because it straw-mans the mainstream position on biological sex and gender, thereby overreacting and throwing out a lot of baby with the bathwater. Additionally, it also assists in the alienation of people – especially young people – who feel as though they don’t fit in the standard categories of the gender binary.

First: sex is binary, and even though there is a strong correlation between biological sex, gender identity, and gender expression, it’s not a 1:1 correlation. There are folks with typical male/female biology, identity, and expression – the vast majority of people are – but there are others who are atypical in one or more of those categories, or even have the traits that are typical to the opposite sex.

That sex is binary is not very controversial – though there is chatter about its challenge – which is one of the reasons why social constructionists tend to steer clear from science surrounding it. Instead of dealing with the science, they’ll tend to try and complicate things by doing some ‘social science’, but they fail to reach down into the nitty-gritty of the biology. I won’t try to bore anyone but to sum it up: in our sexually reproducing species, the SRY gene is the determinant of bio-genetic sex. At that bio-genetic level, when the SRY gene is functional in the germline one is a bio-genetic male, and when it is not functional then one is a bio-genetic female. This happens in every human embryo and it is either functional or not. Given this, we do have a biologically exhaustive binary at the bio-genetic level.

This science is important since it shows how bottom-up things are, whereas the social constructionists think of things as top-down. The SRY is also important since it acts as a switch that instigates the male sex determination in human development, causing a cascade of genetic processes that are responsible for the hormonal, gonadal and genital development. These underlying processes form the groundwork for the phenotypes we observe, and are important for understanding ourselves, our behaviour, and our differences. It is important to note that though the SRY gene instigates male sex determination, there are mutations and criss-crossing of biological circuitry that occurs after the instigation. These hiccups can lead to a host of developmental disorders that social constructionist scholars love to collect and categorise in the hopes of refuting the binary, but such disorders are completely consistent with the function of the SRY gene and the binary it provides.

Since every human embryo goes through this bio-genetic sex differentiation process, and given the relative infrequency of outliers, the vast majority of people are typically male or female both biologically and psychologically.     

Now, while bio-genetic sex is binary – everyone either has a functional SRY gene or not, so one is either bio-genetically male or female – the social constructionists are not focusing on that level of detail. Instead, they focus on the higher level: the messier biological circuitry that is set in motion after the SRY gene unleashes a cascade of hormones, or not. This focus is both tactical and lackadaisical. It is tactical because it allows the gender/sex critic to point to myriad mutations and disorders in sex development that apparently put people outside of the binary and thereby attempt to explode the binary. It is also lackadaisical because it fails to partake in the hard work on analyzing and familiarizing one’s self with the science, and instead allows one to engage in haphazard social science. 

Instead of honestly assessing the informed mainstream view in its totality, the social constructionists are trying to exploit the fact that the science shows us that there isn’t a 1:1 correlation between biological sex, gender identity, and gender expression, and thus take that as evidence that there is no correlation at all. Once they’ve established that gender/gender identity and expression aren’t correlated with biology, or that biological sex doesn’t even exist, they then argue that it’s completely a social construct.

Since it’s a social construct, it isn’t something that happens naturally, and since it doesn’t happen naturally and yet it is something that happens to all of us whether we want it to or not, it is unjust, and since it is unjust, it must be abolished in the service of the utopia.

The issue with the social constructionists is that it is quite difficult to peel the ideology and politics away from the arguments and science. In fact, much of the science is rarely contested, and instead the social constructionists use and abuse history to build up a strawman of our society and paint it as more intolerant than it is by giving us examples of how intolerant it was without any recognition of the progress that has been made.

Now, no one is denying that there is a wide range of human experiences and behaviour but given that we’re a biologically evolved and sexually reproducing species there is a bimodal distribution of attributes and traits that are typical to males and females. These distributions make up the respective normative behaviours and characteristics seen in men and women. In the past, those who were atypical to their respective category were seen as ‘unnatural’ and were sometimes forced to conform to the norm, sometimes violently. There are still some people who think this way today, but in our liberal society, with its concepts of pluralism and family resemblance, and informed by scientific research holds that there is nothing unnatural about such atypical people. Instead, such people are seen as examples of the diversity of human beings. What the social constructionist folks are doing is attempting to redefine these atypical people as gender identities – and are exploiting the science to trick vulnerable people who feel alienated from the norm.

Postmodernism is a Vile Cancerous Doctrine? - A Response to Mark Kingwell

On December 9th, 2017, Mark Kingwell, professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto and regular contributor to the Globe and Mail wrote a piece entitled, 'No, postmodernism at universities isn’t a vile, cancerous doctrine'. In it, he appears to argue that post-modernism and its scepticism of global progress and meta-narratives could be an antidote to Trump and other right-wingers in our midst, writing:

I mean someone who says things and then denies he said them; someone who has his hired flacks defend notions such as "alternative facts"; someone who uses claims about freedom to invoke hatred and suppression of views he doesn't like... That's actual silencing, not just the disapproval of bad ideas that's the baseline cost of talking to intelligent, critical people. Where I work, if you say something dumb, somebody will call you on it. How about that?

You see, the belligerence observed on college campuses across North America are examples of students standing up against some tyranny or other. The highfalutin technical jargon wielded by such students that has been cultivated in the classrooms are the tools needed to speak truth to power.

In fact, at the end of the piece, Kingwell asserts that post-modernism is about challenge and critical thinking - to stand up to those 'who utter falsehoods or behave intolerably'. 

I couldn't  help but think that a certain choir was being preached to. In addition, I also got a sense that the piece was not so much a defence of post-modernism, per se, but rather a jab at a particular someone... and that someone being Jordan Peterson. Of course Kingwell railed against Trump in the article, but Trump has never commented on post-modernism, Peterson, however, does so all of the time, and does so with the lingo utilised in this piece. I don't want to go down that route as I disagree with Peterson somewhat on this issue, as well.

Below is a response to Kingwell - knowing full-well that he didn't intend to come out with a treatise on post-modernism and its virtues.

For those who want things bite-sized, check out the TL;DR below. For the rest, The LONG FORM contains a fuller account of my position. Post-modern/ism is henceforth 'po-mo'.

TL;DR:

• Po-mo isn't a vile doctrine, per se: it's the result of Enlightenment naturalism undermining our hitherto held rational entitlement to various beliefs in various discourses. 
• The critical enterprises of the natural sciences disenchanted the world and disillusioned humans, and WWI & WWII compounded the disillusionment.
• Po-mo stresses the contingency of our beliefs and calls into question the content of those beliefs.
• Po-mo exploded in the universities in the 1960's and has pervaded universities again: there has been an explosion of 'critical' disciplines that utilise po-mo methodology for political purposes.
• Po-mo's political projects privilege marginalised groups and generate resentment within its critical framework.  

LONG FORM:

I agree with Kingwell that po-mo isn’t a vile, cancerous doctrine, but I do not think that it’s innocent either. Also, it appears to me that po-mo is regaining influence in our current climate, and given its track record, I find this upsurge to be dubious and worth exploring and contesting. 

To the first point, I think po-mo is a hangover from Enlightenment naturalism duking it out with Enlightenment rationalism resulting in disillusionment. The great unmaskers (Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault) excavated hitherto taken-for-granted discourses and showed how certain beliefs are linked to events that provide no evidence for what is believed thereby undermining what rational entitlement one thought one had for the belief. 

I don’t have an issue with such arguments from contingency, as it were, though one has to be careful with the genetic fallacy. I do, however, think the wrong lesson was learnt from the unmaskers, and as such the disposition of contemporary po-mo, as well as its expansion, is troublesome to me.There's this Nietzsche quote that I love, 'that which is shaky should be pushed over'. I think the sentiment of this aphorism is exhibited by po-mo. It's busy pushing things over without concerning itself with developing alternatives, and this can only be done from a position of relative security and safety (read: privilege).

Post-modernism has exploded into numerous disciplines: critical race theory, subaltern and postcolonial studies, women’s and gender studies, whiteness studies, queer theory, as well as certain aspects of anthropology, law, sociology, and philosophy. 

Such areas are permeated by a boilerplate scepticism towards universalising discourses in favour of multiplicity and difference, as well as modernising discourses and their defence of rationality, science, objectivity, etc. As such, there is an insistence on purging social theory of its Eurocentric bias, and the claim that Western theories are heavily infused with this bias. This, I think, throws out a lot of baby with the bath water.

The biggest problem with po-mo is that it seeks to undermine the very areas that ought to be retained: the reality of human nature; the centrality of certain universal aspirations which issue from this human nature, the need for abstract, universal concepts that are valid across cultures, the necessity of rational and reasoned discourse, etc.

To me, this isn’t ‘critical thinking’ – this is just a new orthodoxy, and is based in resentment. One can see this in the intense identification with the problems of marginalised groups and the resultant attacks on the ‘dominant culture’, and I think this is where people get the idea that po-mo is ‘vile’ or ‘cancerous’ as resentment is hardly a positive emotion or motivation. As an aside, I have this bone-deep suspicion that people who are indignant often are so for the pleasure of it and not because they want to solve a problem.

I take there to be a difference between po-mo theory and how po-mo theory is used. But I also think that one can evaluate something by the fruit that it bears.