Transactivism 4

Beyond Belief?

In Transactivism 3 we established that if there’s no order of fixed “gender presentations” that are really mental states (as required by a Type-I elimination) then such presentations are just expressions of, or are otherwise correlated with, the states in question. And since subjects have first-person authority over the content of their mental states, no one has the authority to decide if a particular transperson fails or succeeds in presenting the mental state that constitutes their gender identity legitimately, even in trans subcultures where the overriding ambition is to formulate successor concepts that cannot be conscripted into the service of a heterosexually abusive (and perhaps even white suprematist) power. The acknowledgement of first-person authority over gender identity compels us to be maximally inclusive: no woman* must be left behind. For Bettcher, then, all arguments about presentational norms relate to “metaphysical identity”, but “strictly ethical” source of authority associated with the revised concepts relates to existential identity. And the thought here is that although one might be wrong if one’s belief that one is a woman is construed metaphysically, one cannot be wrong if it is construed existentially, as an expression of what you believe or of who you are or—as I concluded—with “what you identify as”. That led us to the following:

EE_BII    What people used to call “women” and “men” (people with particular genitalia) are (really) women* and men* (people who identify as women* and men*)

It should be apparent even from this formulation that there’s a problem here. In shifting from a epistemically masked (un)ethical authority (genital status in the service of a sexually abusive power) to an existential-ethical one we no longer have the fixed “gender presentations” to get right. And once we retreat not just from fixed presentations but from the very idea that the presentations constitute the normative standard for being a woman* or man* it become obscure what one is doing when one “identifies as” a certain thing. After all, we can’t recast the parenthesis “people who identify as women and men” since that draws on the distinction we want to impugn. In the existential-ethical sense, then, it would appear that one can say no more about what it is to be a woman* than that it is to perceive that one is a woman*^[1].

Now, on the commonsense level at least we can glean something of what motivates Bettcher’s distinction between “existential” and “metaphysical” identity. I might be employed as a teacher but not regard that as my calling since what really floats my boat is building things out of matchsticks^[2] or fighting against the continuing use of fossil fuels: such activities speak for me of who I am (ecowarrior; skilled craftsman). But Bettcher requires far more work from the distinction than this. So, for example, it is possible to answer “a teacher” to a whom question even if one ‘hasn’t spent much time teaching’. Indeed, since one can “be” an ‘unactualized teacher’ (p. 111) one need never have taught at all! But to say “a teacher”—even unactualized—in answer to a “whom?” question is but the beginning of an answer, not an answer in itself. What does it mean to say you identity as (believe yourself) a teacher?^[3] Presumably, one would have to dilate on what one understands by “teacher” as opposed to, say, “waiter” in order to distinguish one’s existential identity as an unactualized teacher from that of an unactualized waiter. Likewise, when answering “a woman” to the question “who are you?” it must be something that can be understood as relating to the specific identity question, to distinguish it in turn from—say—identifying as a teacher or a waiter and from a man*.

It is telling that the artificialness of the distinction becomes more obvious still when one considers embodied activities rather than more abstract vocations. Is it possible to truly believe (even if not believe truly) that one is a skilled craftsman, or ecowarrior, pianist or explorer, because although one has never built a model, glued oneself to a bridge, played the piano, or departed leafy suburbia one’s ecowarriorhood, for example, is “unactualized”? Can one give any sort of content to one’s who-ness without talking about the shape it has given to one’s second nature^[4]? Although Bettcher acknowledges that ‘an existential self-identity is essentially bound up with reasons for acting’  (p. 111) they fail to see that this is for the simple reason that if “existential identity” concerns what you believe then we must acknowledge the normative character of such states^[5]. So when, for example, you believe that you’re an ecowarrior, you believe that it is true that you’re an ecowarrior, not that it’s true that you believe that you’re an ecowarrior. If you believe something your obligation is to act in line with what the truth of that belief, not with what its mere possession, might commit you to^[6]. And that for the simple reason that one might believe that one is an ecowarrior and avow it sincerely but be deludingoneself (as with the belief, say, that one was a “unactualized” ballet dancer). One’s “existential identity” as an ecowarrior is evidenced in one’s activities as such; and the converse of this is that when one says that one is an ecowarrior and acts accordingly one can demand (in the appropriate context) that one is treated as (acknowledged as) an ecowarrior. When Bettcher identifies the who one is with how one wants to be treated he’s acknowledging the reciprocity of this normative structure, this inseparability of belief (here “existential”) from (“metaphysical”) world. But because the need to be maximally inclusive requires that semantic authority remains with the subject that acknowledgement takes a perverse form: ‘it is difficult to pull apart metaphysical self-identity from beliefs about one’s existential identity. After all, the belief one is a woman^[*^] may be a belief about both what one is and who one is’ (p. 111). The reason why it’s difficult to “pull them apart” is because sundered they make it impossible to see how one can view “reasons for acting” as reasons. If on the basis of my belief that I’m a woman* I expect to be treated in a way that differs from being treated as a man* it’s because I take others to understand by those terms what I do.

A resistance to acknowledging the normativity of belief pushes Bettcher back towards the extravagance of a idealist metaphysics. Consider the following: ‘The claim that one is a woman will be true in case womanhood is part of “who the person is, really” and false if it is not’ (p. 112). To be a woman* is to possess^[7] a mental state/gender identity of a certain sort, the content of which cannot be gainsaid because it is expressive of some essential “womanhood”. And since womanhood is part of one’s essence if and only if one believes that one is a woman* one is a woman* if and only if one believes one is. But this fact—that one is a woman*—would be what Wittgenstein refers to an as “inordinate fact”^[8], something grasped ‘non-discursively’ as if what it is to be a woman* ‘could be swallowed down in a single gulp’^[9]. The problem is that in making content hard to credit (making it hard to see what someone means when they assert “I am a woman”) we cannot make sense of the normativity of belief that the rational demand to be treated in a certain way—the cashing-in, as it were, of one’s autonomy—expresses. On the one hand, if identifying ethically-existentially as a woman* simply requires believing that one is a woman* and all that in turn demands from a community is that they accept as true the avowal that one is a woman* then nothing further follows than that the sub-culture has vouchsafed to individuals the right to use the sound (in English) of the word “woman” in the sentence “I am a w-o-m-a-n” and have it acknowledged that although no one knows what they’ve said, they have nevertheless said something true. However, if one believes that one is woman* and in avowing it sincerely demands to be treated in ways that are different from having avowed that one is a man* (as well as from being a waiter, teacher, etc.) then the implication is that each of these ethical-existential choices comes with options always-already sorted into those we’d want to associate with women* and others with men*. And if not, why bother associating these questions with the terms “woman” and “man” in the first place? Apart from the (at best) potential blimpishness of this suggestion (“women like to be treated like princesses”? “women like to wear nice dresses”? “Women have long hair and are over-emotional”?), note that the determination of these roles is not itself within the purview of the person in question: the price to be paid for the normativity of one’s belief that one is a woman* is that it might be false and indeed one might believe sincerely that one believes one is a woman* but nevertheless be in error.

In raising these concerns about content and normativity we have been evoking classic objections to Cartesian dualism. What slogan better illustrates the inclusivity requirement than variations on “I think (I’m a woman*) therefore I am (a woman*)”? And while the distinction between “metaphysical” and “existential” identity comports comfortably with setting up the physical world (with its “genital” information) as “external” to a “internal”, incorrigible subjectivity, the content of gender identity states so understood is akin to the world-/body- insensitive mental states of the Cartesian, the content of which, being “self-contained” (as in a dream), makes it likewise difficult to fit into the picture intentionality and action. Moreover, just as Descartes has his tertium quid^[10] so does Bettcher: subaltern groups mediate between the dominant culture and the individual subjectivities that comprise them by presenting for consideration the whats that are or are not to be incorporated into the whos. But although subcultures are supposedly open in their discussion of metaphysical identity that is not in fact the case because it is ruled out a priori that biosexual characteristics can be a constituent feature of the existential identities that such groups are supposed to be helping emerge. And that for the straightforward reason that if they were then someone’s claim to be a woman* could be overridden on the simple and demonstrable grounds that they are not.

One requirement of a transformative politics is to articulate a standpoint from which to evaluate and oppose the practices of mainstream culture. But preserving first-person authority in the name of inclusivity requires the subaltern group to close itself off from any consideration that is prima facie in conflict with that authority, and so a metaphysical line has to be drawn round such groups. But if a subculture defined by a certain metaphysical belief or set of beliefs (denying that the terms “woman” and “man” for example have biosexual implications) decides that within that context agents have the right to avow that they are a woman* or man* and not have it answerable to any community standard of correctness, then people outside those groups have no such normative obligation. An analogy would be to a religious sect whose creed included the “existential” rule that believing that you’re a member of the sect is sufficient to be a member^[11]. That might place on existing members a requirement for mutual recognition and corresponding action—for example, to give each new member £100—but not on people not already contracted in as it were. We might say of members of such groups that they have certain beliefs, but their possession of those beliefs doesn’t put us under the same obligations as possessing those beliefs (holding them true) ourselves does. Norm-instituting communal practices cannot parlay their conferred“existential” rights for “epistemic” ones: you cannot talk about the world you want to transform without using the semantic resources of the world.

Having rejected the idea that Bettcher’s position could be account for in terms of a Type-I elimination we asked whether a Type-II version of the explication schema could satisfy the (ii) continuity and (i) content problems whilst respecting theobligation to be maximally inclusive. Given the claim that the terms “woman” and “man” were being used anti-progressively to circulate genital information the extra burden placed on Bettcher’s explication was to convince us that we shouldn’t opt for an elimination simpliciter. However, the inclusivity requirement means that not only is the price of entry to a norm-instituting subculture a metaphysical commitment that biological terms can play no role in the negotiation about meaning, but also an “existential” commitment that gender identities “carry with them their own imprimatur”^[12]. As we’ve seen, we can find no “use” for gender identity terms understood in this way^[13], even if the subjectivities in question are cocooned within a potentially norm-instituting (tertium-like) subculture. No use means no content and no content means no continuity. But there’s a broader point to made here about what Type-II explications require from us. In Transphobia and Language 1 and 2  we noted that the move towards grounding gender-discourse in self-identity—exposed once again as problematic—was motivated by the failure of attempts to construe “male”, “female”, etc as genderterms, the norms for the correct employment of which were unrelated to biological sex. As we went on to argue, if gender terms relate to role-specifications independent of biological state then we have no reason to think that the role is as maleas opposed to “as-male”, where male-hyphenated has no extra-role specification.

The failure of attempts to construe in purely gender (role-based) terms concepts like “male”, “female” etc. reveal the extent of their parasitic dependence on non-role based uses. And that dependence is a tip-off to the erroneous presupposition of such attempts; namely, that that gender-assignments are a strict alternative to biological assignments. But recall the following:

EE.      What people used to call “wo/m/en” are (really) wo/m/en* (Explication-Elimination)

The assignments on the left-hand side were never biological as opposed to performative, as if these designated metaphysically disjunctive classes of facts. Putative Type-II explications like these, which involve shifts in vocabularies, exploit the pragmatist conviction that biological facts are no more in epistemic isolation from non-biological facts than facts in general are from values^[14]. Demonstrations of parasitism reveal that inferential dependencies cannot be shaken-off just because one has a theoretical commitment to the idea that biological facts are distinct from or can be constructed from non-biological facts (dualism or radical constructivism). Indeed, it’s precisely because of its exploitation of these dependencies that gender discourse is of progressive, critical importance. If someone were to ask what’s the point in picking out creatures using their social roles critical gender discourse has a ready answer: it’s because people confuse contingent roles with biological essence. But rejecting that misconception does not warrant reducing biology to role or eliminating it altogether.

One way to present the issue here is in the form of a dilemma. Recall that we need to make intelligible the migration of authority to the subject whilst satisfying ourselves both that self-ascriptions have content and that continuity of function is preserved. And the constraint here is that any conception of content that adverts to biosexual concepts is inconsistent at a profound level with that migratory imperative. The dilemma is that while Type-I explications can satisfy these requirements it requires a metaphysics of roles or presentations that is unappealing, Type-II explications—rejecting monism in favour of pluralism—acknowledge that we cannot factor out the scientific/physical from the cultural/role and thus require far more complex treatment. I don’t propose to offer here a full treatment of this pluralistic method of explication but given the importance for TR of legitimising a realm of facts whose self-authorising nature puts them metaphysically at odds with so-called scientific facts it’s worth looking at an example that addresses concept change from the other direction. This will in turn allow us to return in a progressive spirit to a reconsideration of gender identity.

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^[1] Cf. Berkeley: ‘This is all that I can understand by these and the like Expressions. For as to what is said of the absolute Existence of unthinking Things without any relation to their being perceived, that seems perfectly unintelligible. Their Esse is Percipi’. And as he goes on to note, ‘nor is it possible they should have any Existence, out of the Minds or thinking Things which perceive them’ (Berkely, G. A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. I.3).

^[2] As Debbie says, ‘Malibu Barbie. That’s not what I wanted! That’s not who I was! I was a ballerina! Graceful. Delicate. They had to go.’ (Paul Rudnick. https://assets.scriptslug.com/live/pdf/scripts/addams-family-values-1993.pdf)

^[3] There is a further concern here that I’m not going to explore; namely, ethnic self-identifications. If we granted that biology has no role in gender self-identification, why would that make a man self-identifying as a women less transgressive than a white man self-identifying as an African-American? This is not a bean-counting exercise, but rhetorically at least it’s worth asking if women and girls have experienced historically and contemporaneously any less pain, degradation and death on account of their sex than has been and continues to be inflicted by one ethnic group on another in the name of racial superiority?

^[4] “Second nature” refers to that range of our behaviours that become instinctive through training and instruction. It’s sometimes associated with “know how” or practical (as opposed to theoretical) knowledge.

^[5] Cf. Baldwin, T. 2007. “The Normative Character of Belief”. In M. Green and J. T. Williams (eds.). Moore’s Paradox, chapter 4. Oxford: OUP. This is a response to Moore’s paradox, a version of which is “I believe that I’m a woman (existential) but I’m not (metaphysical)”.

^[6] If one believes that P one acts according to what one understands the truth of P to commit one to, but if one believes that one believe that P then one acts according to what one understand the truth of believing that P to commit one to.

^[7] Or we might say, “believe that one possesses”.

^[8] Philosophical Investigations, ¶192.

^[9] Philosophical Grammar, ¶11, p. 49.

^[10] In this context this concerns a missing or mysterious third thing that’s required to relate two other things. So for example, in Descartes philosophy minds and objects belong to different ontological orders so we need “ideas” that are grasped by the mind but somehow are caused by objects. In Christianity “grace” might be thought of likewise as mediating the human and divine.

^[11] The analogy seems apt since the variety of existentialism that has been invoked here has more to do with Christian apologetics than Heidegger and Sartre.

^[12] ‘For they will see at the first that … as things of Buffoonery do commonly, they carry with them their own Imprimatur’. Andrew Marvell, The Rehearsal Transpros’d.

^[13] Picking up a promise made at the end of Transactivism 3, I’ll say more about the “privacy” of these “identifyings as” in a subsequent piece.

^[14] It’s unlikely that anyone other than a hardened realist will take a stand against the pragmatist on this issue, so nothing implied here counts against the stance on gender identity being argued for. Another way of making the Type-I/Type-II distinction is that the “ways” of picking out are not methodologically “simple”.