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more notes on the reading
Sep. 19th, 2007 07:49 pmMlle. Serano and I live in apparently very different worlds. She lives in a world in which genderqueer/transgender voices overshadow those of transsexuals, where their terms, frames and experiences dominate; I live in one in which transsexuals aggressively police and exclude any who deviate from the standard model of naturalized, desirable positions of "man" and "woman".
As a biologist, she's very weak on scientific rigor, citation and logical fallacies (particularly hasty generalizations and false equivalencies).
If one is going to critique poststructuralism and deconstructionism, it really might help if one were to actually read and study the subject, rather than consume popularized discourse three or more steps removed.
She apparently believes that the sex/gender distinction is valid and fundamentally important, based on the constructions of her arguments. She states overtly that this is a problematic distinction for transsexuals, which shows either intellectual dishonesty or an embarrassing lack of self knowledge or reflection.
She states overtly that "third gender", "gender variant" or gender identities arise from the intellectual position that there should be more options, and implies by omission that this is the only possible source for these positions. She does this to make the distinction that what separates transsexuals from all those other pesky gender-different folks is the discrepancy between assigned sex and "subconscious sex" (her neologism). Despite stating issues with 'oppositional sexism' (the idea that men are defined against women and vice versa), she only conceives of 'subconscious sex' in terms of male or female. For me, this is problematic both coming and going; she either dismisses my position as an intellectual stance only, or disallows the possibility that my sex is other than the norm. I strongly suspect that from her perspective, I'd be either an academic tourist or a transsexual, both of which do violence to my own sense of self.
I find she's much easier to read once I stop fighting to decide if she's offensive or not, and just accept that she is.
She makes some good points, generally, about sexism, feminism, inclusion and discrimination, but her premises are very troubling to me, often apparently contradictory, and she exhibits a near fetishistic obsession with Hegel's slave dialectic (probably by way of radical feminism, by way of Marxism, but I suspect she's both unaware of those connections and unaware of the implications).
As a biologist, it would do her a world of fucking good to read Fausto-Sterling.
As a biologist, she's very weak on scientific rigor, citation and logical fallacies (particularly hasty generalizations and false equivalencies).
If one is going to critique poststructuralism and deconstructionism, it really might help if one were to actually read and study the subject, rather than consume popularized discourse three or more steps removed.
She apparently believes that the sex/gender distinction is valid and fundamentally important, based on the constructions of her arguments. She states overtly that this is a problematic distinction for transsexuals, which shows either intellectual dishonesty or an embarrassing lack of self knowledge or reflection.
She states overtly that "third gender", "gender variant" or gender identities arise from the intellectual position that there should be more options, and implies by omission that this is the only possible source for these positions. She does this to make the distinction that what separates transsexuals from all those other pesky gender-different folks is the discrepancy between assigned sex and "subconscious sex" (her neologism). Despite stating issues with 'oppositional sexism' (the idea that men are defined against women and vice versa), she only conceives of 'subconscious sex' in terms of male or female. For me, this is problematic both coming and going; she either dismisses my position as an intellectual stance only, or disallows the possibility that my sex is other than the norm. I strongly suspect that from her perspective, I'd be either an academic tourist or a transsexual, both of which do violence to my own sense of self.
I find she's much easier to read once I stop fighting to decide if she's offensive or not, and just accept that she is.
She makes some good points, generally, about sexism, feminism, inclusion and discrimination, but her premises are very troubling to me, often apparently contradictory, and she exhibits a near fetishistic obsession with Hegel's slave dialectic (probably by way of radical feminism, by way of Marxism, but I suspect she's both unaware of those connections and unaware of the implications).
As a biologist, it would do her a world of fucking good to read Fausto-Sterling.
