UPDATE: This has been reposted due to the request of commenters to have a record of the discussion. In addition, comments have now been reopened to allow the posting of an apology. I ask commenters to be especially careful to respect the “Be Nice” rule. Comments will be closed again if the discussion turns nasty.
Recently I’ve been arguing that there has been insufficient attention in the analytic philosophical literature to the domain of social practices. On the one hand, mainstream analytic political philosophers spend a lot of time thinking about the State and institutions that form the “basic structure” of society, but (perhaps due to the influence of political liberalism) do not consider the micro-politics embedded in the practices of everyday life. Ethicists, on the other hand, tend to focus on individual action (character, will) and often don’t even consider that an agent, in acting, is engaged in a social practice.
More here!
Feminist Philosophers 
The juxtaposition of this post and the one on Boulder is striking, perhaps particularly in light of the fact Boulder is scarcely alone.
I think it’d be great if she turned that lens onto her own work and the implications of her definition of “woman.”
Trans women who “pass” may satisfy condition 1 of “woman” (and thus fail to meet condition 1 of “man”), but what is the scope of “regularly and for the most part”? For those who know that I’m trans, I definitely don’t meet condition 1 of “woman” (but I probably neither meet condition 1 of “man”). For those who don’t know, I “pass” and so meet condition 1 of “woman.”
See? Lots of problems…arising from cissexism.
Hi Monkey,
A few things (to avoid writing in all caps, I’ve surrounded phrases that deserve to be stressed with asterisks):
First, it’s ‘trans woman’ not ‘transwoman’. ‘Trans’ is an adjective, like ‘tall’, which applies to some women and not others.
Second, you’re right that a trans woman would meet condition 1 of Haslanger’s definition of womanhood in situations where she *appears cis* or *is read as cis*. The problem is that not all trans women appear cis, and not all of them want to, and *whether or not you appear to others to be a cis woman shouldn’t have a bearing on your womanhood*.
Let’s use an example to make this clear. Suppose a trans woman conspires makes her trans status known to anyone who sees her (perhaps because she doesn’t think being trans is something to be ashamed of) by, e.g., wearing a t-shirt reading “I am a trans woman”. She will almost certain fail condition 1 (if she wears this shirt regularly). This is because Haslanger’s condition 1 is about being perceived to have certain reproductive organs etc, not about being perceived to be a *woman*. So the trans woman in the political t-shirt will fail to satisfy condition 1, even though her shirt asserts that she *is* a woman (by asserting she is a kind of woman, just as a t-shirt reading “I am a tall woman” would) and *even IF* everyone who sees her believes (as is true) that trans women *are* women.
Moreover, since condition 3 (which is about gendered oppression/subordination) explicitly depends on condition 1 being satisfied, a trans woman who makes her trans status known **cannot be oppressed as a woman** (or so the most straightforward reading of the account would suggest). This is both empirically false and wildly offensive. Trans women experience a huge amount of gendered oppression, in addition to whatever oppression they experience which is “merely” about their trans status (I don’t think oppression can be cut up that way, because intersectionality is a thing, but I digress). Indeed, Haslanger’s account seems to imply that a trans woman would be treated *better* than a trans man, similarly situated (i.e. where gender is the only marginalized identity they differ on), if they were to each take strolls down the street wearing the aforementioned political t-shirt or its trans male analogue, respectively. This is absurd.
Yes I see. (Although with respect to male privilege, one response might be that people who think that transwomen retain male privilege are just wrong, so they fail condition 3 of ‘man’ whatever TERFs think).
But the definition is based on social perceptions. So it can’t make that move. (Also, “trans woman” or “trans women” is preferred to “transwoman” or “transwomen.” Being trans is an adjective: it’s not “blackwoman,” for example.)
(the post below was written to respond to comment 7, and when I started it Rachel hadn’t yet given her response. Somehow my comment disappeared down a moderation whirlpool, so here it is again)
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Hi Monkey [circa comment 7 -ed],
A few things (to avoid writing in all caps, I’ve surrounded phrases that deserve to be stressed with asterisks):
First, it’s ‘trans woman’ not ‘transwoman’. ‘Trans’ is an adjective, like ‘tall’, which applies to some women and not others.
Second, you’re right that a trans woman would meet condition 1 of Haslanger’s definition of womanhood in situations where she *appears cis* or *is read as cis*. The problem is that not all trans women appear cis, and not all of them want to, and *whether or not you appear to others to be a cis woman shouldn’t have a bearing on your womanhood*.
Let’s use an example to make this clear. Suppose a trans woman conspires makes her trans status known to anyone who sees her (perhaps because she doesn’t think being trans is something to be ashamed of) by, e.g., wearing a t-shirt reading “I am a trans woman”. She will almost certain fail condition 1 (if she wears this shirt regularly). This is because Haslanger’s condition 1 is about being perceived to have certain reproductive organs etc, not about being perceived to be a *woman*. So the trans woman in the political t-shirt will fail to satisfy condition 1, even though her shirt asserts that she *is* a woman (by asserting she is a kind of woman, just as a t-shirt reading “I am a tall woman” would) and *even IF* everyone who sees her believes (as is true) that trans women *are* women.
Moreover, since condition 3 (which is about gendered oppression/subordination) explicitly depends on condition 1 being satisfied, a trans woman who makes her trans status known **cannot be oppressed as a woman** (or so the most straightforward reading of the account would suggest). This is both empirically false and wildly offensive. Trans women experience a huge amount of gendered oppression, in addition to whatever oppression they experience which is “merely” about their trans status (I don’t think oppression can be cut up that way, because intersectionality is a thing, but I digress). Indeed, Haslanger’s account seems to imply that a trans woman would be treated *better* than a trans man, similarly situated (i.e. where gender is the only marginalized identity they differ on), if they were to each take strolls down the street wearing the aforementioned political t-shirt or its trans male analogue, respectively. This is absurd.
I’m posting on behalf of Lookitszee:
(the post below was written to respond to comment 7, and when I started it Rachel hadn’t yet given her response. Somehow my comment disappeared down a moderation whirlpool, so here it is again)
====================
Hi Monkey [circa comment 7 -ed],
A few things (to avoid writing in all caps, I’ve surrounded phrases that deserve to be stressed with asterisks):
First, it’s ‘trans woman’ not ‘transwoman’. ‘Trans’ is an adjective, like ‘tall’, which applies to some women and not others.
Second, you’re right that a trans woman would meet condition 1 of Haslanger’s definition of womanhood in situations where she *appears cis* or *is read as cis*. The problem is that not all trans women appear cis, and not all of them want to, and *whether or not you appear to others to be a cis woman shouldn’t have a bearing on your womanhood*.
Let’s use an example to make this clear. Suppose a trans woman conspires makes her trans status known to anyone who sees her (perhaps because she doesn’t think being trans is something to be ashamed of) by, e.g., wearing a t-shirt reading “I am a trans woman”. She will almost certain fail condition 1 (if she wears this shirt regularly). This is because Haslanger’s condition 1 is about being perceived to have certain reproductive organs etc, not about being perceived to be a *woman*. So the trans woman in the political t-shirt will fail to satisfy condition 1, even though her shirt asserts that she *is* a woman (by asserting she is a kind of woman, just as a t-shirt reading “I am a tall woman” would) and *even IF* everyone who sees her believes (as is true) that trans women *are* women.
Moreover, since condition 3 (which is about gendered oppression/subordination) explicitly depends on condition 1 being satisfied, a trans woman who makes her trans status known **cannot be oppressed as a woman** (or so the most straightforward reading of the account would suggest). This is both empirically false and wildly offensive. Trans women experience a huge amount of gendered oppression, in addition to whatever oppression they experience which is “merely” about their trans status (I don’t think oppression can be cut up that way, because intersectionality is a thing, but I digress). Indeed, Haslanger’s account seems to imply that a trans woman would be treated *better* than a trans man, similarly situated (i.e. where gender is the only marginalized identity they differ on), if they were to each take strolls down the street wearing the aforementioned political t-shirt or its trans male analogue, respectively. This is absurd.
I see, thanks!
(Lookitszee – not sure where your comment has vanished off to – inner workings of wordpress are sometimes a mystery.)
Hi Rachel — thank you for linking to your blog post on male privilege and transphobia. I am wondering why one shouldn’t think it’s true that it’s possible for a trans woman to retain some practice, habit, etc of male privilege by virtue of the acquisition of dispositions that she acquired through masculine/male socialization pre-transition.
Lack of fear of sexual violence by men is one example — people assigned female at birth are socialized not to walk home alone at night for fear of sexual violence, not to go to parties with boys and booze, etc. People assigned male at birth are not socialized this way (though for black men the threat of state violence makes this different). And, further, constraining one’s movement to avoid walking home alone, parties with boys and booze, etc is not irrational within the logic of rape culture — it’s risk management. But it of course constrains lives in really significant ways — frustrates sociality, riding public transit, etc.
Of course trans women experience sexual assault, both pre and post transition. So do many men. But it seems quite plausible to me that spending many years of NOT having the constant background radiation fear of sexual violence that keeps women from going to the store, their friends’ house, from a walk, could of course cause S to acquire a property that privileges her along the gender axis, but that she could plausibly retain pre-transition to post-transition.
Because in order to do so one must speak in really problematic generalizations. I never said it wasn’t possible for a trans woman to retain some sort of privilege by being raised and socialized as masculine for much of her life. That wasn’t in dispute. What is up for dispute is the assumption that if one is a trans woman, then one *does* have forms of privilege so derived.
…and one of the problematic generalizations under-riding your argument (or supposition) is that all trans women’s childhoods and upbringings are the same. If one appears gender variant from a young age, then one will likely be in constant fear of attack, harassment, and even rape. Some of us respond to this in different ways, and often in ways that we don’t want to. It’s no less coercive growing up as a cis woman, in *some* cases, than it is to grow up with a trans identity but male-assigned at birth. Also, what about trans women who transition as young as 3? Are you really going to argue that she has benefitted from growing up without the fear of rape, etc, that many cis women grow up with? (Moreover, your supposition assumes that all cis women grow up with the same experiences: this is very easily demonstrably false.)
(this is LookItsZee under a different name)
Ann,
I feel like you picked a particularly bizarre example. Trans women experience an extremely high risk of being the victim of violent assault, both sexual and non. Are you suggesting that being a trans women would make you *less* likely to be constantly terrified of sexual assault? That hasn’t been my experience at all.
There definitely *are* interesting questions about trans people and their relationship with gendered privilege pre- and post- transition, but socialization is largely a red herring in that regard (its effects on trans people haven’t really been studied, and most anecdotal evidence I’ve amassed suggests it mainly gives them a boatload of complexes).
Honestly, I’m kind of shocked that you would pick this as your example. I can’t get over it. I really feel like you should try to learn more about the lived experiences of trans women. I can’t really say much more about this without getting upset, but there is a very powerful quote by Red Durkin, a trans activist and comedian, about the death of Donna Ostrovsky, an acquaintance of mine who was lost to suicide this past summer, and the fear that trans women like her live with.
“You were always so scared, even when you were being brave. How could I be mad at you for being so scared?! Every time you didn’t show up, I knew it was because you were just too scared and I never held it against you. There’s so much to be scared of in the world. All my friends are all terrified. All the time. My friends are afraid of being around other people. They’re afraid of being alone. My friends are scared to go to the store. My friends are scared that men are going to run them over on purpose. They’re scared to ride the bus. They’re scared everyone’s going to find out how to scare them and then scare them on purpose. I keep thinking about how scared you must have been. You left the house by yourself at night. Anyone who doesn’t understand how scary that is will never understand you or me or us.”
(this is LookItsZee under a different name)
Ann,
I feel like you picked a particularly bizarre example. Trans women experience an extremely high risk of being the victim of violent assault, both sexual and non. Are you suggesting that being a trans women would make you *less* likely to be constantly terrified of sexual assault? That hasn’t been my experience at all.
There definitely *are* interesting questions about trans people and their relationship with gendered privilege pre- and post- transition, but socialization is largely a red herring in that regard (its effects on trans people haven’t really been studied, and most anecdotal evidence I’ve amassed suggests it mainly gives them a boatload of complexes).
Honestly, I’m kind of shocked that you would pick this as your example. I can’t get over it. I really feel like you should try to learn more about the lived experiences of trans women. I can’t really say much more about this without getting upset, but there is a very powerful quote by Red Durkin, a trans activist and comedian, about the death of Donna Ostrovsky, an acquaintance of mine who was lost to suicide this past summer, and the fear that trans women like her live with.
“You were always so scared, even when you were being brave. How could I be mad at you for being so scared?! Every time you didn’t show up, I knew it was because you were just too scared and I never held it against you. There’s so much to be scared of in the world. All my friends are all terrified. All the time. My friends are afraid of being around other people. They’re afraid of being alone. My friends are scared to go to the store. My friends are scared that men are going to run them over on purpose. They’re scared to ride the bus. They’re scared everyone’s going to find out how to scare them and then scare them on purpose. I keep thinking about how scared you must have been. You left the house by yourself at night. Anyone who doesn’t understand how scary that is will never understand you or me or us.”
…that reflects quite a lot of my own personal experience.
“Because in order to do so one must speak in really problematic generalizations…. What is up for dispute is the assumption that if one is a trans woman, then one *does* have forms of privilege so derived.”
Why couldn’t the same be said, no less helpfully, about non-trans men? What is supposed to render the generalizations particularly problematic re these men and not trans women?
Because men do have male privilege. Trans women don’t. Does that mean that men are monolithic and all men have all forms of privilege? No, of course not. But this is a distraction: a red herring.
Let me try another tack.
Maybe I’m missing something, but isn’t Sally trying to give a definition that is descriptive of actual social practices (and is therefore epistemically valuable for social inquiry), and, given how those practices actually play out, wouldn’t her definition be worse if it counted trans women (at least those who don’t pass) unambiguously as women? If what she’s trying to do is analyze the concept of woman that’s actually operating out there in the culture (assuming that there is any single concept, which seems doubtful), then the fact that visibly trans women come out as borderline cases seems to be an accurate result.
Maybe I’m wrong and her definition is meant to be morally/politically normative. But then it’s a *really* bad definition, for obvious reasons.
What Zee and Rachel are most charitably construed as trying to argue, it seems to me, is that we should change our concept of woman to one that includes trans women (or perhaps that we should recognize their authority about this matter, for concept externalism purposes). And they’re right about the normative issue, sure, but it seems plausible that, at the moment, the concept that Sally’s trying to theorize about—the one that’s out there in the wild—is not what Zee and Rachel want it to be.
Oh, so trans women aren’t real women “in the real world”??
Have you read what you just wrote?
I’m sorry, but I thought the misogyny I experience is because I’m a woman…maybe I’m wrong.
…and trans women who don’t “pass” are thus “borderline” women? And that’s an “accurate result”?
Ann, I think the point is that Haslanger has failed to correctly describe actual social practices, because her theory works OK for describing cis women, but cannot explain the oppression that trans women experience as women. And if the point of the concept is to help us accurately describe how gendered oppression works, it’s not good enough, because it’s only going to work in a subset of the cases.
Rachel, I have a further question. (I don’t think that you are obligated to answer it, or that the validity of your criticism turns on whether you have an answer. I ask mostly because I am curious, and believe that you would have something valuable to say.) How deep do you think the problem goes? Could Haslanger’s definition be made less cissexist by tweaking clause (i), so that it’s about perceived membership in the class “woman”, rather than perceived biological role? Would it be better to adopt a new definition–maybe with more emphasis on self-perception as belonging to the class “woman”? Is there something about the practice of giving definitions of “woman” that is already distorting and harmful when it comes to understanding the oppression of trans women?
Ann has asked me to add this apology from her:
First: a genuine apology.
The comments I posted to the FP post were ill-considered and harmful. I understand that I hurt two colleagues who I value very highly, and I am painfully sorry for doing so. While I don’t want to excuse what I said, I do want you to know that those comments, particularly the ones that said it would be a “good result” that trans women did not fall under the descriptive concept of a woman, were not an accurate reflection of my beliefs about trans women. My comments were thoughtlessly phrased, and hideously disrespectful to you, but I was not trying to suggest that trans women are not women.
Second: a clarification of a substantive philosophical point.
I think that Sally’s project offers an analysis of the operant concept of “woman” under conditions of patriarchy, and as such it shouldn’t be surprising if it (the operant patriarchal concept) misgenders some self-identifying women who do not “pass.”
In patriarchal society, because of implicit and explicit transphobia, people routinely misgender trans men and women. If Sally’s project is to explain the way that concepts of gender are deployed in such societies, part of what her account needs to do is explain the widespread and consistent misgendering of trans individuals. I have always read her as doing that, rather than endorsing such misgenderings. My concern is that objecting to the “cissexism” of the definition confuses the map with the territory.
Last but not least:
I think there is much value in collective struggle across and in spite of disagreement (even fairly deep disagreement about goals, tactics, principles, etc). But in order for such collective struggle to actually work, interlocutors need to listen. This is something I failed to do. This experience has served, for me, as an important object lesson in the difficulty of disagreeing with people I care about under conditions of oppression. I hope to do better in the future. I don’t expect you to take that on faith, and I will try to prove it with my actions, the first of which is to listen better to those I care about.
Ann, the apology is very much appreciated. Thank you.
On the substantive point: perhaps your cis privilege leads to your being able to be so charitable in your reading of her project. As one of the affected people — a trans woman — I don’t have that luxury.
I see yet another cis feminist theorizing about gender without even *considering* (I checked: she doesn’t raise the issue once) its impacts on trans people, and whether the existence of trans or intersex people would have any impact on her view. Her silence on this is another reflection of cissexism in the view: if one is going to theorize about what it means to be a man or woman, why are so many cis feminists ignoring trans and intersex people and perspectives? It seems to me that one can’t theorize about this properly without doing so, and yet (essentially) no one does it.
The problem with Sally Haslanger (besides her annoying way of leading the reader to the conclusion she wants them to see, as if some sort of Socrates acolyte) is she is obsessed with the idea of persistence through, or despite of, real change. I think it’s safe to assume she holds that the self remains intact after SRS (and allegedly, always after). She basically wrote as much in her 2001 class notes for a course at MIT. This is the same position of radical feminists who have always asserted the socialization theories of gender, which presume the power of internalization, an idealism given more airtime by Hegel and countless others who have followed. Haslanger makes a point of treading carefully in the case of TG/TS but no one should mistake that for support, not unless they’re naïve.