New: “Being Trans in Philosophy”

Dear Willow, on a natural reading of your comment, you are characterizing my philosophical work on gender as part of “a political project of segregation, and annihilation.” That is a very serious and potentially damaging allegation. Did you really mean to make it? If so, could you please give some citations to or quotations from my writings to support this charge?

Dear Willow, thanks for the reply. I am not sure what your answer to my first question is, and you seem inclined to ignore the second. In your latest reply to Sandhya you suggest that “question[ing] and interrogat[ing] trans existence” is fine, provided this inquiry is not part of a campaign to remove trans people’s rights. In particular, arguing that “‘gender identity’ as an unchallengeable belief is bullshit” is also OK, provided that it’s the conclusion of some “trans philosophy.” But if you’re worried that philosophical views might be used for malign purposes, why does it matter whether the view comes from trans philosophy? Indeed, if practitioners of trans philosophy are asserting that ‘gender identity’ as an unchallengeable belief is bullshit, wouldn’t this make it even easier to weaponize?

In answer to your question, I am happy to reassure you that my philosophical work on gender is not part of any sinister scheme—GOP-led or otherwise—to secure “the goal of segregating and annihilating trans people.” 

“The difference between trans philosophy and anti-trans philosophy…”

This seems to be a category mistake. Philosophy and its legitimate branches do not, in themselves, entail any conclusions. Rather, they investigate the area in question. Ethical philosophy seeks the truth on ethical questions, philosophy of language seeks the truth on philosophical questions concerning language, and so on.

If ‘trans philosophy’ is a category of philosophy, it is an attempt to seek the truth on philosophical questions on trans topics. If there are two people who do this but reach opposing conclusions, then they are both doing trans philosophy. Neither is doing ‘anti-trans philosophy’.

To do things they way you seem to suggest would make the philosophical inquiries illegitimate. For instance, it would allow me and my friends to specify a type of philosophy that presumes the conclusions we accept as fundamental. Anyone who challenges those conclusions would be making moves in the ‘anti’ philosophy instead, and would therefore not require our engagement, or vice versa. But then both sides would have no reason to take the other seriously.

I know you said “it seems” but I fail to see how what Willow wrote involves a category mistake. And even if it did, this looks like a distraction. What seems clear is that Willow is talking in the context of the ethics of enquiry where it very much matters not just what questions you ask but also why you are asking them and with what purpose. One of her basic points, if I read her correctly, is that one can’t simultaneously engage in enquiry that is “well-suited” for the political goal “of segregating and annihilating trans people” while also pretending that that’s not happening.

“But then it isn’t clear what sense can be made of this idea that “trans philosophy would only ever try to debunk gender identity while simultaneously replacing it with something better that helps fight trans oppression rather than vindicate it.” ”

— But then it isn’t clear what sense can be made of this idea that “realist metaphysics would only ever try to debunk reductionism while simultaneously replacing it with something better that helps fight relativism rather than vindicate it.” —

I repeat: lol

When a realist view rejects realist doctrines (such as reductionism) it either replaces them with something else (such as supervenience) or it is not a realist view.

Realists also may ignore inquiries that are tied to the anti-realist project. There is, for instance, a rich literature on the finer points of inferential role semantics that only matters to people already invested in anti-realism.

Likewise, a realist need not have answered all anti-realist objections in order to develop further some aspect of the realist program. For instance, one can develop the finer points of representational semantics without dealing with anti-realist arguments against such a semantics. Often, the best defense of a view is to flesh it out.

Of course, there’s a foundational disagreement where objections can be traded, but this is not the only or even central focus of research. In many cases, views need to be fleshed out on their own terms before such tradings can be productive.

Willow is, thus, employing entirely routine terminology here.

Trans philosophers advance positive views of trans people’s existence, replace bad concepts with better ones within that frame (e.g. dysphoria -> phoria), and explore and develop such views both in breadth and in depth, their ethical consequences, etc.

Anti-trans philosophers advance negative views of trans people’s existence, replace bad concepts with better ones within that frame (e.g. reproductive capacity -> body plans) and develop etc.

Why is it, Justin, that routine things puzzle you as soon as the word “trans” is involved?

Justin, I think that your division of philosophy into topics is an overly simple account. It ignores other aspects such as methodology. By your logic, since feminist philosophy concerns questions of sexism, a paper arguing that men ought to own women would count as feminist philosophy. One feature that distinguishes trans philosophy from merely philosophizing on the topic of transness is precisely its methodology.

I also want to point out that philosophical investigation invariably proceeds from some starting points. For example, investigations into ethics typically presuppose the existence of the external world and other minds. The fact that trans philosophy starts with some basic views about who we are as trans people does not seem to be a serious problem, imho.

I think you are reading Willow’s remarks too generally. I don’t think that all theories that might be rejected in trans philosophy would have to be replaced by new theories.

However, it is indeed a starting in trans philosophy that something like gender dysphoria (I would call it “phoria”) exists. If ‘gender identity’ was being deployed to account for that and it was found wanting, then, one would want a different theory to account for it.

Another example: It is a starting point of trans philosophy that trans people experience trans oppression. If a particular theory of that oppression was found wanting, a new one would need to be developed.

Trans philosophy is a kind of philosophical practice in resistance to trans oppression. In this respect, it is analogous to feminist philosophy, which is practiced in resistance to sexist oppression.

She is saying that certain kinds of philosophizing about trans issues that does not exemplify particular methodological commitments does not count as “trans philosophy.”

Justin,

Are you claiming that (a) feminist philosophy, in order to count as philosophy, needs to be able to include arguments in favor of the subjugation of women AS PART OF FEMINIST PHILOSOPHY ITSELF or (b) it merely needs to countenance the existence of such arguments outside of the purview of feminist philosophy?

If you mean (a), then it would appear your conclusion is that “feminist philosophy” is an oxymoron. Um. Okay, then. LOL. At least we have established that trans philosophy and feminist philosophy are on similar footings.

I think that where you go wrong is in thinking that different subdisciplines don’t have built-in assumptions that they need to get the whole discussion off the ground.

For example, imagine a philosopher berating ethicists for assuming the existence of the external world. Or for assuming the existence of other minds. Or for assuming that anything exists at all. Surely such philosophical interventions would come off as misguided. Those aren’t the sorts of questions that are currently on the table.

When we do philosophy, it is invariably the case the certain questions are on the table and others are not. If we didn’t make this initial methodological move, discussions would go nowhere.

Feminist philosophy and trans philosophy are no different in this respect. In the first case, the question “Should men subjugate women?” is simply not on the table. In the second case, the question, “Should we make trans live unliveable?” is not on the table.

I’m afraid I don’t understand exactly what you’re asking me here, or how it relates to the point I’m making.

Any subdiscipline of philosophy, qua subdiscipline of philosophy, needs to inquire into a set of philosophical questions in a fair manner, in which presumtions may be open to question, and so on.

I don’t see what philosophical questions about being able to afford an oat milk latte would be so extensive as to constitute a subdiscipline of philosophy. But if there were so much philosophical discussion just about affording-an-oat-milk-latte that people could specialize in just those questions — and I find that hard to imagine, but I’m trying — then no, it would presumably not be okay for people with an AOS in affording-a-daily-oat-milk-latte philosophy to presume that everyone can afford it. Why should they assume it? Why should it be held to be beyond question? That would make the AOS even more dubious.

If some people feel very strongly that everyone ought to be able to afford a daily oat milk latte, then of course they are welcome to fight for this. Perhaps they might raise funds specially for the purpose, so that nobody ever has to spend a day without an oat milk latte. But the practice of getting everyone a daily oat milk latte would not thereby become a branch of philosophy, if that’s what you’re asking me.

Sorry if I’ve missed the point: I admit that I can’t see very clearly what’s going on in your comment.

To most of that, I say: fair enough. It really is my view that many things do not count as properly philosophical, even though they call themselves philosophical and even though their adherents have managed to exert political pressure (among other things) to confer institutional legitimacy on such things.

To put it another way: just as some purportedly scientific approaches are in fact pseudoscientific, I hold that some purportedly philosophical approaches are in fact pseudo-philosophical. In both cases, groups of people who are committed in advance to certain conclusions (which is not possible in genuine science or philosophy) have attempted to introduce new methodologies that they can be used to ensure those outcomes, while giving those outcomes the veneer of science or philosophy. But the reason why science or philosophy confers this status is precisely because, when done properly and fairly, science and philosophy cannot guarantee that the outcome of inquiry will fall in line with one’s intended direction. Hence, pseudoscience/pseudo-philosophy.

The reason why I say ‘fair enough’ is that you have correctly indicated a general opposition to these practices. My opposition is not arbitrary, and I think that I can make a compelling case that these approaches are pseudo-philosophical and hence should be rejected. I think that many, and probably most, philosophers will see things my way, but of course some do not. I take it that you are sincere in your disagreement with all this, and since I don’t have the time to set out everything I would need to make that case here (even if this were the right venue for it), this isn’t a case of your ignoring some argument I’ve given for my view on all this. So again: if you don’t see that what I’m saying makes sense, fair enough. I do hope to have a book out in a year or two that explains the reasons, if you’re interested.

I don’t know what arguments I have ignored, Bothered. Talia Mae Bettcher has argued that ‘trans philosophy’ is not unique in having a built-in activist orientation, since ‘feminist philosophy’, for one, does the same thing. I grant that that is the case, but I continue to hold that no legitimate subdiscipline of philosophy — or science, for that matter — may have an activism-presuming methodology in any political direction.

You have also claimed that, on my view, “vast swathes of philosophy, including all sorts of varieties of critical theory,” will count as philosophy. I think that that is correct, except that of course I feel that it begs the question to call these things areas of philosophy. But I don’t see that as a problem for my view.

Again, I don’t have time to argue through all the reasons for my position here, though they will be clear enough for many and quite possibly most of the people who are reading this. But the simple idea is that one constraint for something to count as legitimate science or philosophy, substantive (and, certainly, political) conclusions cannot be baked in to the very methodology. And that is true regardless of what direction the activism takes.

I am well aware that some people have tried to make an argument of the form, “We’re always presuming something, therefore presuming any one thing is no more objectively legitimate than presuming any other thing, therefore any limitation on the methodology of philosophy is nothing more than the bias of people who are blind to their own preconceptions,” etc.

I have seen many arguments along these lines. I have found them all to be seriously lacking.

I have spent countless hours engaging with these sorts of arguments. At an earlier stage, in fact, I thought some of them might be correct, and advanced them on my own. I later became disillusioned with them.

Perhaps I am wrong to reject those arguments. But I do not reject them because I don’t know about them or because I haven’t been interested in hearing them out. I just think, after long engagement with them, that they are bad arguments.

Bothered, I certainly never said or implied that what I said is correct because many people said it. Of course, the appeal to popularity is no good reason to accept something.

The reason why I mentioned that many people will already understand the reason for what I said is to justify my decision to write what I did without explaining the reasons to everyone. It was sufficient for me to make my point to others who could easily supply the reasoning themselves.

If you can’t see the reasoning on your own and need a nudge in that direction, it might be helpful to consider how you would react to the opposite move. Imagine that some people create a new purported sub-discipline, ‘anti-trans philosophy’, and declare that its methodology involves doing the work of preventing trans people from being socially accepted. When people argue against the conclusions of ‘anti-trans philosophy’, its defenders say, “Well, those objections have no place in our sub-disciplines, since they promote rather than hinder the social standing of trans people.”

Or imagine a sub-discipline of Young Earth Creationism, whose methodology is to get people to worship God as revealed in a literalist reading of the Bible.

Those could not possibly be legitimate sub-disciplines because they presume answers to the substantive questions they consider. There is a perfectly good set of disciplines, including biology, geology, and so on, that already addresses the questions that Young Earth Creationists and neo-Darwinists discuss. Within those disciplines, people are free to argue for Young Earth Creationism or neo-Darwinism (though when they do this, for reasons that are NOT illegitimately baked in to the methodology of the disciplines, the Young Earth Creationists turn out not to be successful).

The reason why these things are not proper sub-disciplines is not that they presume erroneous or socially pernicious conclusions. Approaching things that way begs the question. The only way we can reach a fair conclusion about the right attitude to take toward trans issues, or about the truth or falsity of Young Earth Creationism, is through non-question-begging disciplines and sub-disciplines: that is to say, legitimate disciplines or sub-disciplines. And what makes them legitimate is that they approach their material in a fair and neutral manner, presuming nothing about the correct or morally preferable conclusions one needs to reach at the end of the inquiry.

I hope that sketch suffices. But even if it doesn’t satisfy you, you can see now that I am in no way saying that my view about what counts as a proper discipline or sub-discipline should be accepted merely because it is popular.

Hi, Queer philosopher. There is no inconsistency here of the sort you’re discussing.

There are gender-critical philosophers and philosophers who promote the mainstream transgender views. But neither of these things is a sub-discipline of philosophy. That’s what I’m saying is a category mistake: the confusion between a *position* someone can take on a philosophical issue, and the *sub-discipline* in which one considers and argues for positions on either side of those issues.

If issues concerning trans people are extensive enough to merit a special sub-discipline of philosophy — and that might very well be the case, for all I’m saying — it must be *neutral* with respect to those issues.

We could call such a sub-discipline ‘trans philosophy’ if we like, but it must be possible within that sub-discipline for people to argue for different positions on (say) the metaphysics of the transgender phenomena, the various ethical questions connected with it, etc. If one person in that sub-discipline argues for (say) a policy of automatically deferring to young children who request medical transitioning, and someone else argues against that categorically, and a third person argues for a more moderate position, all three of those people’s arguments are a part of that same sub-discipline.

To put the general point another way: the methodology of an authentic sub-discipline cannot exclude any conclusions or positions on the issues the sub-discipline addresses (though of course people within that sub-discipline can, after the reasons on both sides have been considered fairly, determine that the reasoning on one side or the other is inadequate, and that the truth seems to lie on the other side).

Thanks for the reply, Queer Philosopher.

In your reconstruction of what I said, you’ve changed the wording in an important way, which I think is reinforcing the conclusion. I did not say (as far as I recall) that “gender-critical philosophy is a position.” What I said is that there are gender-critical philosophers, exactly as there are (for want of a better term) gender-affirming philosophers.

But that is not the same as saying that these people specialize in, respectively, ‘gender-critical philosophy’ or ‘gender-affirming philosophy.’ I’m saying that neither of these is a position. Philosophy is not a position. It is a discipline in which one addresses certain types of questions. And there are sub-disciplines like ‘ethical philosophy’ and ‘philosophy of language’ that, again, are not positions, but domains of inquiry within philosophy.

Now:

1. Willow wrote, “The difference between trans philosophy and anti-trans philosophy…“. I called that a category mistake because there can be no pair of philosophical sub-disciplines such that one is the negation of the other. Whatever questions a sub-discipline approaches, people giving opposing answers to those questions are working within the same sub-discipline. (If Willow had said that there are some philosophERS who say one thing and other philosophERS who say the opposing thing, then I would not have said that it seems like a category mistake.

2. You say, “If I am a philosopher of language and defend a view that requires or entails behaviorism, then arguments against behaviorism are arguments against my view and I cannot make that go away by saying “oh but that’s phil mind”.

I agree, but I don’t see why that causes a problem for what I said.

3. You ask: “Is logical positivism an area or a position within metaphysics?”

It’s a position within some other disciplines: metaphysics, semantics, and epistemology, and maybe some others. It takes a position on various questions, though, so it cannot be a sub-discipline.

4. You ask: “Is virtue ethics an area or a position within ethics?“

It’s a position within normative ethics.

5. You ask: “Is truth-conditional semantics an area or a position within phil lang?“

It’s a position within the philosophy of language.

6. You ask how we can tell what the answers to these questions are. It’s quite simple: they are positions on issues (namely, such issues as ‘What is the correct theory of meaning?’ ‘What is the correct model of morality?’ and so on.

Sub-disciplines of philosophy, such as epistemology, metaphysics, political philosophy, and so on, are not positions one could take on any issue. They are areas of inquiry in which one may assert, deny, or explore the truth of various positions, but they are not in themselves positions.

7. You say that I ought to have addressed the comments you made before about gender-critical philosophers. Here goes:

7a. You said, “You mean like the purported sub-discipline “gender critical philosophy” whose methodology involves doing the work of absolishing gender / absolishing gender identity (depending on who you ask)?“

Again: gender-critical philosophy is clearly not a sub-discipline. It’s a set of positions about gender. A set of positions cannot be a sub-discipline.

7b. You said: “You like when the GC philposophers have declined to substantively engage with the prior literature on the following grounds? ‘We reserve the right to return to first principles wherever we see fit, and particularly where we judge that a particular historically influential intellectual trajectory in feminist philosophy has been a mistake.’ ”

I can’t comment on this without knowing more about the exact case you have in mind, and the background to it, and I suspect that I might need hundreds or thousands of hours of work to get up to speed on whatever it is.

But without doing that, I can say: Certainly, people should not arbitrarily dismiss inconvenient lines of argument or inquiry. On the other hand, if some ‘literature’ was created by people who did not follow standard disciplinary practice (e.g. if that literature was produced without facing the gauntlet of serious critical review), then I don’t think that any philosopher should be criticized for failing to heed it.

To see why, consider the fact that my friends and I could create a vast ‘literature’ made up of opaque, undefended, bullshit claims that you will disagree with (for good reason), but that would take you a hundred thousand hours to read through. I don’t think that, in that case, it would be fair for us to demand that you spend all that time reading that ‘literature’ for years of your life before you can disagree.

Please note, again, that I said that there are gender critical philosophers — I did not say that there is such a discipline as ‘gender-critical philosophy’. To say that would be a category mistake.

There are many things one can say about certain philosophers. Some philosophers hold gender-critical views. But they do not thereby do a thing called ‘gender-critical philosophy’.

There are many other descriptions one could give of philosophy. For instance, I know some tenured philosophers. But that does not mean that they engage in something called ‘tenured philosophy’. I know many Canadian philosophers, but the fact that they are both Canadian and philosophers does not entail that they work in a sub-discipline called ‘Canadian philosophy’.

All I granted is that there are gender-critical philosophers (just as there are gender-endorsing philosophers, or whatever the right term is). But being critical or accepting of something cannot make one into a philosopher who works in a certain domain. That’s the category mistake I keep trying to explain.

You say, “I am pointing out to you that the norm involved in your normative claim “then she could just” does not exist.”

I see what you’re saying now. Well, if you grant that it is not legitimate for philosophers to dismiss objections raised by interlocutors who disagree with them on the same questions they see as central, then I don’t see the benefit of saying that the two interlocutors are working in different sub-disciplines with different methodologies. Is there one?

You say: “Squabble: So ‘analytic philosophy’ isn’t a subdiscipline, because it includes some positions on proper method? (Are methodologies “positions”?)”

Well, the term ‘analytic’ philosophy has been used to mean all sorts of things. On one austere understanding of it, it entails that all philosophical questions can be reduced to questions about the meanings of our utterances. But the term is also used to refer to any philosophical approach that demands rigorous argumentation and responses to serious criticism, etc. On some articulation, perhaps, ‘analytic philosophy’ is so broad that it encompasses all genuine philosophy. I don’t know.

If we are talking about a limited view of what philosophy is — for instance, if we’re talking about logical positivism — then I would say that ‘analytic philosophy’ is mostly a position in meta-philosophy, though it probably entails a number of first-order philosophical claims.

Thank you for the responses, by the way: they’re helpful to me in thinking all this through.

You say: “I note for the record that you address something I signpost as a “squabble” but not what I signpost as a “substantive complaint”.”

If I did do that, I assure you that it’s unintentional. If you repeated the substantive complaint here and I answer it now, great. If not, please say “Here is my substantive complaint…” so I don’t miss it.

Here’s your summary:

“– You say that gc philosophy isn’t a sub-discipline, and that it is a category mistake to confuse position with sub-discipline.”

More precisely, I’m saying that being gender-critical is holding a position. I’m not saying that there is such a thing as ‘gender-critical philosophy’. I’m saying that there are philosophers who talk about gender who are gender-critical, and others who are gender-affirming (or whatever it’s called).

“– I say that you claim that gc philosophy is a position.
– You say you said no such thing.”

Right. Again, my position is that there is no branch of philosophy called ‘gender-critical philosophy’. That way of speaking seems to me to be, or invite, a category mistake.

“– I explain why I think that you claim that “gc philosophy is a position”.
– You say it is a category error to say that gc philosophy is a sub-discipline.
???”

Right. Once again: I hold that we should use terms including ‘philosophy’, like ‘moral philosophy’, ‘philosophy of religion’, etc. to describe areas of inquiry, and not to describe positions. That’s why the phrase ‘gender-critical philosophy’ seems to me to be a category mistake.

There are gender-critical philosophers: these are philosophers who take a gender-critical view. But those people are not working in an area called ‘gender-critical philosophy.

You say: “Earlier it seemed that you characterize sub-disciplines wholly by topic. Now you characterize them (partially) by methodology.”

What I said was a response to this idea that the sub-discipline of trans philosophy, or of feminist philosophy, has activism as part of its methodology.

Philosophy has its own methodology, and it would be unusual for a sub-discipline to have its own distinctive methodology. Any distinctive methodology that is in conflict with the methodology of philosophy more generally cannot be a legitimate part of any sub-discipline of philosophy. And one essential part of the methodology of philosophy, I hold, is that it not be a form of activism (whether progressive, conservative, or anything else), and more broadly that it cannot presume its conclusions in advance of inquiry.

If such things were permitted, then we would have the problems I indicate. If not, we wouldn’t. I’m certainly not saying that sub-disciplines are characterized by methodologies!

“Regardless, there is no norm that permits dismissal of criticism across methodological boundaries either. Conceptual-analysis philosophers cannot dismiss experimental philosophy merely because it is experimental.”

I think this is the strongest point you make here, and I thank you for it. I see now that I should have put my underlying concern a different way.

The main idea here is that, in any legitimate area of inquiry, space must be made for those who disagree with the views and arguments given by others. This is especially important as it is human nature to ignore, misrepresent or downplay the strongest points of our interlocutors. We need to make sure that those objections are right in our faces.

If we don’t take pains to do that, then the discussions become weaker and their results become much less authoritative. They also undermine the integrity of the institution of which they are a part. No university should give a free ride to pseudo-disciplines or pseudo-sub-disciplines that allow people any quarter from the strongest arguments and objections from the other side.

Now, let’s say that we split a discussion into two different sub-disciplines: say, gender-critical philosophy and gender-affirming philosophy, or theistic philosophy and atheistic philosophy, or what have you, on the basis of the position taken. Let’s say we even go further and allow each of those new ‘sub-disciplines’ to take on its own special methodology, where political activism and social transformation in line with their pre-established conclusions is part of that methodology.

I’d like to understand how you expect — if you do at all — to prevent these discussions from being degraded and corrupted. Let’s say that, for some issue P, we create two ‘sub-disciplines’: ‘P philosophy’, made up of people arguing for P and aiming to change the world in line with P, and ‘anti-P philosophy’, devoted to arguing for the anti-P position, and aiming to transform the world along anti-P lines.

Wouldn’t it be reasonable to expect that the people who work in P-philosophy would end up being less, and not more, apt to fairly address (or even properly understand) the claims and arguments of the anti-P philosophers?

What would a seminar in P philosophy be like? Even if the department sometimes held a seminar in anti-P philosophy as well (and I see no reason to expect this), wouldn’t people attending either seminar have strong reason to expect that the game is rigged, and that anyone attending the P philosophy seminar had better either accept P philosophy or else pretend to, in order to impress the professor? Couldn’t the professor reasonably say to an anti-P philosopher who takes the seminar, “You’re in the wrong place here: this is a seminar on P philosophy, and we don’t offer anti-P philosophy in this department?”

(If not, and both views are welcome, then why have this weird split between sub-disciplines on the basis of the position one takes in the first place?)

Then imagine that some philosopher specializes in, say, anti-P philosophy. She will contribute to anti-P philosophy journals and conferences, while the people who raise objections against her arguments will do so in the P philosophy journals instead.

Doesn’t this just sound like a disastrously bad way of doing things, and one that invites worse, rather than better, engagement between the people working on these issues? If not, then why not?

Hi again, Queer Philosopher.

You blame me for ‘acting as a hostile witness’ and continuing to miss or evade a point you were making.

But in fact, I kept answering the point, and you kept failing to notice this because you changed my wording repeatedly in ways I kept reminding you of. I never claimed (as you said) that there is such a thing as ‘gender-critical philosophy’, even though you insisted over and over again (despite my telling you otherwise) that I said that. What I did agree to is that there are gender-critical philosophers. I kept making that point clearly and patiently, but since you failed to pick up on where you had misread me no matter how many times I said that, you kept asking questions that had already been answered.

For the last time, let me respond directly to what you say is the substantive point I keep missing.

Here’s what you say:

“Substantive complaint: what made you assume that Willow claimed “trans philosophy” to be a sub-discipline in this sense?”

I will address exactly that complaint right now (though I have many times already).

Here is the comment you’ve been making such a fuss about, which I made on Willow’s post. I quoted Willow as saying, “The difference between trans philosophy and anti-trans philosophy…”. Then I said, “This seems to be a category mistake.”

I said that that use of the term ‘philosophy’ to refer to two opposing positions on the same issue seems to me to be a category mistake. I think, for reasons I keep explaining to you, that we ought to reserve terms of the form ‘____ philosophy’ or ‘Philosophy of ____’ for things other than positions one can take on the issues under discussion.

I was not attempting to comment on the claim Willow was making, but rather on the use of ‘philosophy’ in that way. I said nothing about Willow’s views, or about Willow, as you can see. I was just commenting on the practice of calling opposing views different types of philosophy.

I agree that it would have been better for the anthology, ‘Gender-Critical Philosophy’, to have been called something else, for just this reason.

I do not think that my view on the usage of the term ‘philosophy’ in this way is all that idiosyncratic. Clearly, not everyone agrees with me. But many people do, and I think that it’s a distinction worth making, especially when many members of the public (for what I take to be good reasons) are rapidly losing faith in the university on the grounds that we have not done a great job of keeping the discussions fair and unbiased.

You give a number of purported counterexamples to what I’m saying: “experimental philosophy”, “skeptical philosophy”, “formal philosophy”, “pragmatic philosophy”. None of these are unified by an “area of inquiry”.”

But you have failed to read my comments carefully, let alone charitably. I already specifically granted the possibility that some sub-disciplines of philosophy can have their own special methodologies, provided that those methodologies do not conflict with the central methodology of philosophy. And part of that is the avoidance of partisanship. Once again: no legitimate area of philosophy (or any proper academic discipline) can include the goal of activism, for one thing. They also cannot assume the truth of substantive claims within their disciplines.

Experimental philosophy does not presume the truth of any substantive claim within its discipline. Neither does formal philosophy or pragmatic philosophy. They all rely on meta-philosophical claims about the best way to engage in philosophy, but that is not the same thing as assuming the truth of some position on a substantive issue within those fields. It would be illegitimate for the methodology of experimental philosophy to *assume* that evolutionary psychology explains everything (though such a thing could be argued for within experimental philosophy). It could not legitimately be baked into the *methodology* of formal epistemology that Pascal’s wager is successful, and so on. Those would all be philosophical malpractice.

Skepticism is a position one can take in epistemology; but ‘skeptical philosophy’ is at best just a somewhat misleading way of saying ‘skepticism’. People can specialize in skepticism, and there can be courses and conferences and anthologies on skepticism, but people who disagree with skepticism and argue against it are a part of all that. If anyone tried to articulate a methodology for skepticism (as a sub-discipline) that entailed that anyone who didn’t accept skepticism as the correct epistemological position, we would have to reject that.

Physicists do accept the existence of the physical world. But that is not really a position on an issue in physics. The question of whether or not there is a physical world is only in dispute in metaphysics. However, the evidence for the law-like nature of the phenomena of physical experience is so difficult to dispute that even anti-realists about the physical world generally agree that there is *something* that the physical theories correctly (or nearly correctly) describe, even if it isn’t the physical world. The well-nigh-indisputable evidence for certain positions on transgender issues, by contrast, are not remotely on a par with that.

I’m sure there is much else you could say in defense of your position, and no doubt some of it would be well worth my listening to. But I’m afraid we seem to be into diminishing returns here, especially given your unfortunate insistence on claiming that I haven’t addressed things that I have repeatedly, and that I have said things I’ve never said. It’s not on a par with Julian, to be sure: you seem like a sincere and thoughtful person, though you also seem somewhat hell-bent on proving me wrong in a way that overshadows your desire to get what I’m saying right.

Still, I’ve genuinely benefited from this conversation, and I thank you for that. Take care.

Queer Philosopher,

I’m sure that you *remember* things going this way, but you are straightforwardly incorrect. I will demonstrate this by comparing your representation with reality.

First, here is your representation of things, in your own words — the words you have just written:

“From your response about ‘experimental philosophy’ (etc), I understand your final view to be negative one: that “X philosophy” has multiple uses, but ought never be used to denote a “position”.
This is a very substantial departure from how you presented your view initially (about “areas” or “disciplines”), and one I could only bring out through antagonistic questioning (hence, hostile witness)”

Now, please compare that with the comment I actually made in response to what Willow said — the comment you’ve been attacking me for all this time, and which I’ve kept restating for you over and over when you kept failing to read and understand my words:

“This seems to be a category mistake. Philosophy and its legitimate branches do not, in themselves, entail any conclusions. Rather, they investigate the area in question. Ethical philosophy seeks the truth on ethical questions, philosophy of language seeks the truth on philosophical questions concerning language, and so on.

“If ‘trans philosophy’ is a category of philosophy, it is an attempt to seek the truth on philosophical questions on trans topics. If there are two people who do this but reach opposing conclusions, then they are both doing trans philosophy. Neither is doing ‘anti-trans philosophy’.”

You see? The thing I have been saying all along — that X philosophy ought never be used to denote a position — is identical with what you now call a “very substantial departure from how [I] presented [my] view initially.

I have been saying this over and over, trying to get you to read it. Now, at last, I’ve got through to you. But the reason it took this long is not that I changed what I was saying. It’s because you doggedly refused to pay attention to what I clearly said.

You continue: “Counterexamples yet abound: feminist philosophy, gender-critical philosophy, idealist philosophy, materialist philosophy, conservative philosophy; all these denote or include some claims about their subject matter.
I understand that you think one *ought* not use these phrases to denote something that includes a claim. But that is really idiosyncratic to you.”

I already addressed these cases. I am not willing to go through it all again. If you are actually interested in my response, please read the comments I already made in this thread.

I also pointed out that I do not think that this understanding of ‘X philosophy’ is merely idiosyncratic. I hold that many other people see it as I do. If you don’t agree, that’s fine: but here you are merely asserting what is in question. If you think I’m wrong and that nobody sees it that way other than me, then feel free to present reasons in support of that conclusion.

The view that a discipline or sub-discipline cannot properly import assumptions on substantive questions is a cornerstone of the academic enterprise. The fact that some groups within academia have not lived up to that standard of neutrality is, or at least quite plausibly seems to be, a major reason why the general public has lost faith in academia over the past decade and a half. Taxpayers are being asked to support fair research and unbiased teaching, and they see many instances of this support being used for biased research and teaching instead. The ability to create politicized sub-disciplines with activism as part of their methodology, in which answers to major questions are taken for granted, is a major part of the problem. That is hardly an idiosyncratic idea that I just came up with out of the blue. Many others in academia strongly agree with me and are working to improve things.

Finally, you respond to my comment, “Physicists do accept the existence of the physical world. But that is not really a position on an issue in physics.”, by saying,

“Sure. And whether there is oppression of women isn’t really an issue in feminism. It is rather the subject matter of feminist philosophy.”

Do you honestly not see any relevant difference between a physicist’s assuming that there is a physical world, and a practitioner of ‘feminist philosophy’ assuming that women are, on the whole, oppressed in our society? Do you think that the declarations of feminist theorists are just as secure as the declarations of physicists? Does the fact that feminism is a sociopolitical movement while physics is a domain in which theories must be subject to rigorous attempts at falsification carry no weight with you?

If not, or if you see the *vast* difference but don’t think it matters or just happen not to care about it, then I must suggest that it is you who are your own worst enemy.

I’m happy with the responses I already gave to these points, and to things any competent, charitable reader will be able to see that I would say in response to the newer variations.

Where does normative philosophy fit into your idea of true philosophy?

So is “activism philosophy” a kind of normative philosophy? If not, what’s the difference between the two?

Justin:

That you come out at this point with a straight (type)face admitting that you never intended to justify your point, but to just “write what I did without explaining the reasons to everyone” because they would be clear to some select few reading this: bewildering.

So: 

You intervene under a post, stipulating what “true”, “proper”, and “legitimate” philosophy is and pronouncing whole parts of philosophy (trans philosophy, feminist philosophy, what have you) to be not “proper philosophy”. 

Why? Because, in “legimate philosophy”, “genuine philosophers, in all areas of philosophy, routinely question and debunk all sorts of claims, including seemingly obvious ones, ones that are held to be foundational or otherwise beyond question, etc.”. 

You get questioned on your claims and asked to justify them. 

You refuse to respond with an actual argument or reasons (lack of time, etc.) stipulating that those will be clear enough for “many readers” (who presumably share your conclusions). 

You now openly admit that this was your intention: to stipulate your conclusions about “proper philosophy” (having spent “countless hours engaging with these sorts of arguments”) without arguing for them. 

If this was indeed your intention, then, by your own lights, you intervened here not intending to do “proper philosophy”. What exactly was the purpose of your intervention here then?

Justin:

To be clear, you didn’t answer my question on what the purpose of interjecting here was prior to being “drawn into the discussion”. If “discussion” here means “philosophical discussion”, you clearly didn’t anticipate doing a “philosophical discussion”. So what then? The question is more than warranted in light of all your objections to “activism” and all that.

So, based on the discussion above between you and Queer Philosopher, while sub-disciplines, areas, what have you are not characterised by methodologies, philosophy vis-à-vis other disciplines is. This is (1) a distinctively philosophical methodology (“Philosophy has its own methodology”) and (2) it is unique (“Any distinctive methodology that is in conflict with *the* methodology of philosophy more generally cannot be a legitimate part of any sub-discipline of philosophy.”).

I can make out four necessary conditions for this distinctive unique methodology in all of the above, one negative and three positive:

(i) it is not a form of “activism”, which you say is implied by the (logically) weaker requirement that

(ii) it do not assume its conclusions prior to inquiry,

(“And one essential part of the methodology of philosophy, I hold, is that it not be a form of activism (whether progressive, conservative, or anything else), and more broadly that it cannot presume its conclusions in advance of inquiry.”)

(iii) all positions are open to inquiry (“genuine philosophers, in all areas of philosophy, routinely question and debunk all sorts of claims, including seemingly obvious ones, ones that are held to be foundational or otherwise beyond question, etc.”), and

(iv) “it is an attempt to seek the truth on philosophical questions”.

On (i), you do not define “activism”. One can get a sense of what you mean by the admission that “critical theory”, for example, will on your view not count as philosophy (though it is a vague sense because you seem to have your own peculiar definitions of things)—and since philosophy is defined by its (unique) methodology, “activism” must have a methodology that violates one or all of (i)–(iv). Anyhow, since on your definition of “activism”, whatever it is, (ii) implies (i), let’s stick to (ii)–(iv).

(ii)–(iv) imply that any answer to a “philosophical question” is a staked out position that emerges as a conclusion to inquiry. There is a sense in which you cannot have both (ii) and (iii) at the same time: for inquiry to get off the ground, you need starting positions. (This has been explained to you above by both Talia Mae Bettcher and Queer Philosopher.) 

You seem to envision some kind of reflective general equilibrium theory: across any possible area, sub-discipline, what have you, each starting position is eventually questioned and whatever followed from it stands or falls with that position and this goes on ad infinitum (happily, as you expect, converging to some unique “truth” in the end).

Fine. Except (ii)–(iv) are methodological positions, positions that are heavily debated in the parts of philosophy you rule out as “not philosophy”. I fail to see how this amounts to anything but question begging.

(It’s also worth noting in passing that while you have staked out (ii)–(iv) as positions, you have again not provided arguments for them. Maybe there was some hidden prior inquiry, maybe not; you say now these give many of your reasons; if these are the reasons, as they stand now, they are conclusions assumed prior to further inquiry—in violation of (ii), but fair game per (iii).)

You may be ignorant of the parts of philosophy you don’t consider philosophy. I don’t think that’s exculpatory, but fine. Closer to this discussion, Felix below has explained how exclusion is baked into this very mode of inquiry of a presumably frictionless, free-entry-and-exit reflective general equilibrium. As a source of more objections to the methodological positions in (ii)–(iv), you can also just read the zine that the post where you interjected is devoted to.

Thanks, Simon. This brief response will have to do, since I’m busily moving house:

1. I think I might agree that discovering the truth provides *some* benefit in all cases, but I’m not sure. Even if that’s true, some discoveries of the truth provide very limited benefit (like discovering the truth of the address of an office in a faraway city I have no reason to visit, correspond with, or think about).

2. I think this idea that academic philosophizing or other truth seeking is ‘oppressive’ needs much more careful elucidation than I’ve seen it given before if it’s to be at all plausible. Is the idea that, because Smith argues for some conclusion on some topic, and Smith’s argument is taken by Jones as a reason to treat Brown worse than if Jones had not heard Smith’s argument, then Smith has oppressed, or contributed to the oppression of Brown? And then, if Williams comes on to the scene and accuses Smith of contributing to the oppression of Brown, then has Williams oppressed Smith? Does it make a difference whether Smith’s analysis was correct, well-intentioned, etc.?

Even if there are clear answers to these questions in some cases, I think much — and possibly all — of it will be very unclear.

But let’s imagine, for the sake of argument, that we are able to determine, in any given situation, whether someone’s philosophizing oppresses any other given person. And let’s imagine that we detect some philosopher, A, who has oppressed a significant number of other people through philosophizing.

If we apply your first two arguments to such a case, we will get the strange conclusion that A’s arguments cannot possibly be sound, merely on the grounds that they are (again, for the sake of argument) oppressive toward at least some person. For by the conclusion of your second argument, they cannot be beneficial, and by the first premise of your first argument, nothing that is beneficial can give us the truth!

But it seems most plausible to me that, even if some philosophical arguments or inquiries can be oppressive and therefore harmful, they might be beneficial in other ways, especially if they provide us with the truth. Why can’t it be that it is beneficial in some way while being harmful in some other way? In that case, the harms and benefits could be weighed against each other, but there doesn’t seem to be room for that in the reasoning you present.

Also, even if we just confine ourselves to oppression and ignore the bit about truth, imagine two people who disagree about whether a certain hospital in Gaza was bombed by Israel or by Hamas. The first person has publicly insisted that Hamas is responsible, and that this needs to be agreed upon in order for people’s eyes to be opened about what is happening in Gaza. The second person has publicly insisted on the opposite, and says that we all need to acknowledge that Israel was responsible, which underlines the need to stop Israel. When the truth of the matter is discovered and publicized, one of these two cases will be undermined, and one of the people will lose some credibility for insisting on something that was false. On the generous accounts of ‘oppression’ I’ve heard in this connection, it seems to follow that whichever side loses credibility will be able to make a case that the revelation of the truth was morally wrong because it ‘oppressed’ the people whose advocates were shown to be incorrect.

Those are some of the reasons I have for rejecting the reasoning you mention.

https://dailynous.com/2025/06/26/philosopher-wraps-cooperation-with-trump-in-flag-of-academic-freedom/

Alex, you decided to voluntarily sign up to contribute to propaganda masquerading as science persuant to an order from Trump to produce a report that discredits WPATH’s guidelines on pediatric gender care.

Even if you were someone with expertise relevant to producing a report on the state of pediatric gender care, it would be completely fair to describe you as someone signing on to Trump’s political project since Trump produced an executive order to discredit WPATH’s guidelines and you volunteered to help do that.

In addition to it being bad scientific practice to choose the conclusion of your work prior to surveying the data, it’s just true that what you’ve done is anti trans activism in concert with Trump’s stridently anti trans aims.

No, because anti-vaccine views are wrong. Anti-LGBTQ views are as well. What point do you take yourself to be making here?

(That said, it seems that Bryne is to this area of care as RFK Jr. is to vaccines.)

I know that hypotheticals are fun, but it helps to look at the sorts of executive orders that have actually been issued historically to see what a normally functioning government does. The president of the United States doesn’t usually issue executive orders that state a position on a scientific issue and then direct the production of scientific reports in tandem with that pronouncement.

Here is Obama, creating a bioethics council: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2009/11/30/E9-28805/establishing-the-presidential-commission-for-the-study-of-bioethical-issues

Note section 2c in particular.

Here is Obama creating a national public health council, which is directed to produce some reports, so it would at least be closer to a case that might run afoul of my claims against this recent HHS report:

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2010/06/16/2010-14613/establishing-the-national-prevention-health-promotion-and-public-health-council

Okay so this council produces reports, but the reports are policy advice and the council is comprised of agency heads/political appointees. The reports don’t purport to be providing the medical consensus; they are specifying that science based consensus from HHS/CDC etc. be used as inputs for constructing their policy proposals.

So, while it can be fun to explore the hypothetical of a democrat taking office and ordering HHS to produce a report saying “science agrees with us”, it seems important to note that this hasn’t happened in the past!

Maybe this one is a better case for you: improving mental health access for veterans: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2012/09/05/2012-22062/improving-access-to-mental-health-services-for-veterans-service-members-and-military-families

In this order Obama requests efficiency evaluation of mental health services at the VA, expands staffing there, and some other things relating to community integration, but also directs further research into PTSD and TBIs and mental health. That’s at least the executive branch directing scientific research via executive order!

But note that we don’t get an antecedent statement of what conclusion should be drawn. We get a goal: learn more about how to diagnose and treat mental health issues related to PTSD and TBI (or rather draw up a research action plan that will accomplish this goal).

So, anyway, I don’t like people doing false equivalence with made up future cases, instead of acknowledging that the current administration is behaving in highly authoritarian and inappropriate ways, and that we should be free to make harsh judgments about people who volunteer to step far outside their actual academic expertise to collaborate with them on their anti trans propaganda.

To start with your parenthetical point: Alex Byrne is not an expert in bioethics, and I would say he is not a bioethicist, even if he has, of late developed some interest in bioethics adjunct to his anti-trans activism. He is principally a phil mind/perception/M&E focused person, whose recent interest in “Sex and Gender” initially focused on issues of philosophy of language (pronouns) for some time, before branching out into wider anti-trans seas. But if we are asking ourselves whether he is someone suited to be part of a 9 member panel contributing to the bioethics considerations of pediatric medical care, a) he has a dog in the fight (not coincidentally, the dog Trump ordered win the fight), and b) he is not a bioethicist. Nowhere did I say that philosophers had no business being involved in scientific research, I said this wasn’t scientific research, and that the relevant scientific research of this sort was outside of Byrne’s expertise. If this were a comprehensive study on the consensus of a science focused on perception, I would not have mentioned its proximity to his expertise.

Let me link Trump’s EO, since you didn’t: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/protecting-children-from-chemical-and-surgical-mutilation/

I’m not sure why you want to say that this order looks reasonable (I think that’s a bananas opinion, and illustrative of some of the points being made in the zine that is the subject of the OP about taking a dehumanizing stance towards the people you are philosophizing about), but I don’t grant you that point, even on the assumption that “WPATH guidelines are politicized and unreliable”, and even if that were so, it would not do anything to undermine the claim that producing a report in compliance with this order is an act of political propaganda, not an act of scientific inquiry, given that the output of the report is clearly specified in advance. If you really want to maintain otherwise, I can only advise you to re-read the EO and ask whether a report recommending anything resembling the WPATH guidelines would conceivably be the result of this EO. If you think so, I have a bridge to sell you.

On that point, some people here who haven’t read this article in the Atlantic might find it interesting: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/transgender-youth-skrmetti/683350/

It’s worth noting how Helen brushes aside the reduction in “‘depression, anxiety, and suicidality’—that is, suicidal thoughts,” in favour of focusing on “completed suicides.” As if the former were insignificant, and decisions should hinge on people demonstrating the appropriate amount of suffering to satisfy Helen and the conservative majority on the court. Care is associated merely with reductions in suicidal thoughts; it’s associated with other desired outcomes also. But since that complicates Helen’s thesis, it’s necessary to hand-wave it away and focus on other outcomes, particularly ones that are notoriously difficult to study. Not that Helen is advocating for studying them here; that would require substantial investment in clinical and research programs of the sort that might, again, complicate the narrative and also commit Helen to criticising the government, which is shuttering all that. But then, can she convincingly maintain the pretence that her views are just a matter of demanding scientific rigour?

Better still, look at her page here.

Which is contradicted by the very piece linked to above, where she concedes that she is now “more sympathetic to commentators such as Leor Sapir, of the conservative Manhattan Institute.” Sapir, as she notes in that same piece, “supports the bans” on such care. That is incompatible with “broker[ing] sensitive compromises that respect the dignity of a minority group.” That is lending support to government action being taken against them (after all, that is what the ruling in question, which she also gives a sympathetic characterisation of as providing “clarity,” is about)—specifically curtailing access to the care they are likely to need.

Reading the two pieces together, one gets the sense of the usual “both-sides” centrist pablum, at best. At worst, it’s a complaint that the administration is too loud, too blunt, too vulgar for her liberal sensibilities. She’d rather a quieter, more subtle, more intellectualised authoritarianism. Hence gravitating towards Sapir. In either case, it’s not an approach compatible with “respect[ing] the dignity of a minority group,” and it leaves her earlier more critical piece toothless.

It is a problem for my previous argument, if you take it in isolation and ignore that, in the latter piece, she says that she is now more sympathetic to those who lobby for bans. Bans being, you know, incompatible with being able to do the sort of research she claims as necessary in the earlier piece.

So it’s Early Lewis versus Late Lewis. The problem with my previous argument is that it did not take into account Early Lewis, which, itself isn’t even “Early” given that Earlier Lewis had yet other things to say.

Lewis’ views are unsurprising, given her past commentary. However, we’ve seen pieces like this before; the general argument being that those who support LGBTQ rights are using “fear tactics” centered on mental health concerns. In Lewis’ view, those concerns are unwarranted. But she is wrong; we have good reasons to think that policy choices are significant here. But I’d also argue that the wider culture in which those choices are embedded is also significant, and that efforts to legitimate and normalise anti-LGBTQ views in that culture are also impactful. It’s no accident that bullying in schools often occurs through the lens of homophobia, transphobia, and the like. An affirming approach would be necessary to address this, but Lewis appears to eschew it, ostensibly on empirical grounds.

That’s how her article is framed in general; as though the motivations here, on the part of those like herself, Sapir, and others, are centered solely on the state of the evidence. The obvious corollary being that those who disagree with them must be motivated by something else. But relevant reviews and practice guidelines don’t uniformly agree with Lewis or the only review she cites (Cass). So it’s not as though Lewis can tenably argue that her own views are “evidence-based” in a way that her critics’ are not.

Posturing about evidence is not a new motif in anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. Although such commentators will often frame their concerns as being about “the state of the evidence,” merely addressing their empirical concerns probably won’t have any impact, because fundamentally they don’t want people receiving such care; they are opposed to it as a matter of principle.

That said, if Lewis is worried about the evidence base, it seems it would be a pretty good use of column space to tackle the Trump administration’s devastating attacks on research, including especially the sort of research we would need to do to improve the evidence base. Instead, we get this very surface-level piece, and probably half-a-dozen more like it in other outlets. It’s almost become a cliche.

It’s perfectly compatible with everything I’ve written here that the report Byrne contributed to is poor-quality, that he is not well informed on the issues, that in any case WPATH’s guidelines are fine so that there was no need to revise them, and that for all these reasons he should not have participated. I’m not expressing any view on the first order issues; I don’t think I have anything particularly interesting to contribute.

I’ve commented only on the more abstract question of whether, even prior to answering substantive questions like that, we can conclude that Byrne acted wrongly – say, because of the wrongness of ever working with the Trump administration, or because he is outside the scope of his professional expertise, or because it is in principle wrong to participate in writing recommendations for medical practice under such-and-such conditions.

A lot of work is done in these comments by the term ‘anti-trans’.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me that something like this is going on: certain people with a set of views on a wide range of moral, medical, and other issues that involve trans people is assumed to be correct here, and anyone who disagrees with any of those views in any way and for any reason — even someone who is strongly supportive of trans people and might agree wholeheartedly with all the orthodox views other than one or two — thereby gets the term ‘anti-trans’.

But calling someone anti-trans carries with it the convenient implication that her *reasons* for disagreeing (to whatever extent) with some view in the set of orthodoxies was motivated not by any rational grounds for doubt, but rather by hatred of trans people.

I find it rather sneaky (and this is far from the only place I’ve seen it) that the term used here is ‘anti-trans’ rather than, say, ‘inconsistent with trans orthodoxy’. It implies that the person is opposed not to a set of doctrines, but rather to a protected category of people.

Imagine if we allowed other groups to do that. Take Christians, for instance. A group of Christians could decide on some set of Christian orthodoxies, and declare that it is morally imperative for everyone else to accept all those orthodoxies without question. Along comes Bob, who says that, after reflecting on the criticisms of the design arguments, and some new version of the argument from evil, he has come to feel that the case for theism is just not very strong. He provides the reasons why he now feels that the Christian orthodoxies are not rationally supportable, but Carl the Christian ignores all of these, and dismisses Bob by saying, “Well, no surprise that Bob would say that: he has a recent history of being anti-Christian.” The swindle relies on people feeling forced to accept that, by questioning the orthodoxies, Bob has revealed himself to be hateful of a protected category — with the implication that anyone who sympathetically discusses Bob’s reasoning gives himself away as another bigoted hater. So nobody gets to question the orthodoxies, and they become de facto unfalsifiable for reasons that have nothing to do with their truth or falsity.

Now, hang on. Why isn’t it possible to hold that adults who wish to transition should be free to do so, but to also hold that some minors who express a wish to transition will do well after transitioning, but that others will not, and that, in most cases, a cautious approach should be taken with minors, which will often involve denying their wishes to transition or to take puberty blockers?

There can of course be a dispute over whether that approach is right, and perhaps in the final analysis that approach is wrong. But it certainly does not seem to be incoherent to hold both those views (different ones about adults and minors), and if I’m not mistaken, on your view, anyone who thinks this is ‘anti-trans’. But it seems strange (to me) to refer to such a person as holding that it is a bad thing to transition. By that standard, wouldn’t it follow that someone who thinks that minors should not generally be allowed to get tattoos is anti-tattoo, and so on?

Also, I’ve met people who hold that it’s a good thing for people to transition if they wish to, but that there should be some restrictions on athletic competitions, particularly in rough contact sports, even for people who have transitioned. Whether or not you agree with that view (I take it that you don’t), would you classify that view as anti-trans?

The reason I ask is that these positions I’ve mentioned don’t seem to entail thinking that transitioning is “the worst possible health outcome for a gender dysphoric person,” or that trans people are “perverts, invaders, or cowards,” or that it is better to remain miserable than to transition.

“I have given one reason why I think that Lewis is anti-trans in this sense: she seems to think that reducing suicidality (!) is not a good reason to transition. She seems to be presuming that for as long as one does not actually end one’s life, one is better off not transitioning.”

She doesn’t say any such thing. She says (i) that it is very frequently claimed that preventing transition will lead to suicides; (ii) that Chase Strangio conceded to the Supreme Court that there is no evidence to support this. She’s not making a normative point about transition at all in that part of her article; she is making the descriptive claim that many things asserted about youth gender transition are not well evidenced. (It’s perfectly consistent to think that reducing suicidality is good reason to transition, but that activists act wrongly when they claim that transition reduces actual suicides.)

She also does not concede that there is evidence that transition reduces suicidality. She quotes Strangio as saying it does, but she then cites a systematic review that she claims makes Strangio’s assertion ‘debatable’.

I don’t have a particularly settled view as to whether Lewis’ article is correct, but your description of it doesn’t seem to match the actual article.

“In any other context you’d accept evidence for reducing suicidality as evidence for reducing suicides.”

I absolutely would not; and I have worked in suicide prevention.

Beyond that, all I can say is that we have radically different notions of how to read a text.

> if they are motivated by this underlying belief, why wouldn’t they also fight hard against adult transitioning?

They might be in the same subjective moral position as anti-gay people who do not fight hard against adult homosexuality: they might be persuaded by the libertarian argument that consenting adults should have wide-ranging freedoms. (Or they are insincere about not opposing adult transition — in the name of charity, I set this option to the side.)

> Those are some pretty big claims you’re making here about the motivations of large numbers of other people. I do not find those claims plausible.

> Could you please provide evidence to support them?

> What reason do you have for thinking that, in *typical* cases, the opposition people (including Lewis, etc.) have to youth transition is that they feel that, in general transitioning is bad?

I did not claim to have magically divined people’s motivations. Rather, I provided observable evidence: that they make arguments whose validity presupposes an anti-trans assumption.

I’m not sure what exactly you don’t find plausible. I see two options.

a) You don’t find it plausible that these arguments require this premise. If so, I’m not sure what to do about this. Maybe you can give me a valid reconstruction of these arguments that does not require the presupposition?

b) You don’t find it plausible that these arguments are _actually made_. If so, I can dig up some literal quotes for you. Ostrasyn already gave some such quotes here: https://dailynous.com/2025/06/17/new-being-trans-in-philosophy/#comment-475845

Good, that is useful. I take it that ostrasyn convinced you that some loud and salient voices in this debate are indeed anti-trans in the sense I defined.

I further take it that you consider the argument you reconstruct here to be common or typical among people who oppose youth trans healthcare. So if I show that it presupposes an anti-trans assumption, that will convince you that the anti-trans attitude is common in these circles as well.

Now, the anti-trans assumption lives in your second premise. (I acknowledge hereby that you are not endorsing the argument and hence do not attribute the anti-trans assumption to you personally.)

> 2. Most medical interventions done for the sake of gender transitioning have, or could reasonably be expected to have, permanent, life-altering consequences.

Endogenous puberty has equally permanent, life-altering consequences that one may regret. Your argument, thus, speaks equally against and for trans healthcare.

To only use it as an argument against trans healthcare imports the anti-trans assumption that living as cis is better than living as trans. Here is why:

Not importing the anti-trans assumption means to accept that someone growing up to be a happy trans adult and someone growing up to be a happy cis adult are equally good, equally desirable outcomes. Conversely, there are then two equally bad, equally undesirable outcomes.

(i) That a cis person receives trans healthcare (i.e. does not undergo endogenous puberty) and later detransitions.

(ii) That a trans person does not receive such healthcare (i.e. undergoes endogenous puberty) and later transitions.

In both cases one has undergone a permanent, life-altering change that one might regret. Both late-transitioners and late-detransitioners will struggle to “pass” or to accept their body, might need complex procedures to address this struggle, etc.

The argument, as you present it, tacitly assumes that it is more important to pre-empt the need for detransition (outcome i.) than to pre-empt the need for late-transition (outcome ii).

The goal of youth gender medicine is to minimize the occurrence of both (i) and (ii) and to minimize the impact on the affected person’s life if either bad outcome obtains. There is a lot of space for debate here on how to best achieve this, and many open questions.

By contrast, however, the anti-trans position is that (i) and its potential negative impacts have to be minimized regardless of what this means for the occurrence and impacts of (ii). This is to value cis lives (avoiding (i)) over trans lives (avoiding (ii)).

Hi again, Queer Philosopher. Thanks for the interesting comment.

It’s been awhile since I read Joyce and tried to understand her general position, but as I recall the quote from that interview is at least _somewhat_ misleading in this context. Still, I don’t intend to push back on that point here because it would take us too far away from the main issue. The more important point: I don’t find it plausible, despite what you say here, that the argument I raised for discussion — the one I take to be a very common reason why many people have come to have doubts about the more radical versions of the ‘gender affirming care’ model for minors — depends on what you call the anti-trans position.

I’ll also ignore here the acts/omissions distinction that I believe most people, including most philosophers, hold as morally relevant, and which I think tells against your judgment that the only opposition to a radical gender-affirming model must be motivated by an anti-trans bias.

First, though, I want to be clear that I, personally, concede to your position more than you might imagine. I don’t have children; but if I had a son, say, who felt a budding romantic interest in boys and wanted to pursue that, I’d raise no objection: as I understand things, the odds are very strong that someone who feels that way in his teen years, or even before, is apt to be gay for life, but even if he were to somehow change his mind later and develop an exclusively heterosexual orientation, what harm would there be in letting him follow his heart now? He can do what makes him happy today and, if that doesn’t make him happy years later, he can just change his mind and dating practices.

Or suppose that my same hypothetical son developed a strong desire, as a young teenager, to go around in dresses and stiletto heels, and wear eye shadow and lipstick. Well, again, if that’s what he feels like doing now, he can try it and see whether he likes it; if his feelings persist, he can continue along those lines; and if they don’t, he can stop whenever he wishes. He’s not locking himself into anything he can’t get out of (in the way he would if he got married, joined the army, got a full-body tattoo, etc.). So, fine!

Now, as I understand it, medical gender transitioning, and even the long-term use of so-called ‘puberty blockers’, are not like this. First, as I understand it, there are significant medical risks that come with many of these procedures, many of them lifelong and irreversible. Second, again as I understand it, some of these medical transitions require lifelong medical therapy to maintain them. And third, many of them do not seem reversible: for instance, a girl having a radical double mastectomy will probably never be able to breastfeed children; some of these procedures may make one permanently impotent or unable to have an orgasm; etc.

All the same, I do not think it follows that medical gender transitioning should be prevented whenever possible. Such medical transitioning, I hold, can be a good choice for a number of people. I find it plausible that some people have such an acute sense of gender dysphoria of a sort that seems likely to continue for life, that medical transitioning is the best option despite these down-sides. So I certainly don’t seem to have the ‘anti-trans’ bias you have been discussing.

I think that adults should be free to make an informed choice about whether such a procedure is worth it for them, or not.

But you are talking here not about adults, and not even about teenagers at an age where they might start dating, but about pre-pubescent children. Do I hold that it is never a good thing for children of that age to undergo this sort of medical transitioning?

Actually, I’m not even committed to that! My understanding is that a distant relative of mine has a child (albeit one I’ve never met) who was deeply unhappy and maladjusted until underwent medical gender transitioning, and who suddenly started living a great life. I don’t know the details, but I find it plausible that this was very much a change for the better, and hence a good thing.

But in that case, I have the benefit of hindsight: I have the advantage of knowing that, some years after transitioning, my young relative’s life was much better, and that my relative shows no sign of developing any regrets about it. But at the moment of decision for the parents, there will be no such assurance. The prospect of life-long medical interventions and elevated risks, and of regrets over what may well be an irreversible life decision, loom over the child, who is still too young to be trusted to make any comparable life-altering decisions (e.g. the decision to get married).

On the other hand, you stress that even the prospect of a natural puberty — which will come soon in the absence of any action — could be another process that this pre-pubescent child might come to regret.

Actually, I grant you that this is so — I grant that if the child is to grow into an adult who would want to transition medically despite the risks and costs, then (looking at it now from what is now the future of the child), it will have been much better for that adult to have had the intervention before puberty, since (plausibly, as I understand it) it is much easier to do these procedures on a body that has not undergone changes in the other direction.

So yes, you are right, I think, that there is a risk of harms and causes for regret either way. The possible harms and risks are different in kind and in degree, but there is no avoiding them. I grant you all that.

But how to determine what ought to be done?

It seems to me that the only fair way of doing this is, first, to get as accurate a picture as possible of the general facts of the matter (What exactly are the medical consequences of making this or that choice? How rare is it that children that think and act as this one does will continue to feel profound gender dysphoria for life in the absence of these medical interventions? Etc.), and also to take a very careful look at the details of this specific child.

I think that, if we were to have at hand a very reliable way of determining those things, and if the process these children went through proceeded with great care and the painstaking consideration of other options with each child before medical transitioning, then transitioning even for prepubescent children would be reasonable.

In fact, if (say) 99.99% of patients who underwent these procedures as children strongly agreed throughout adulthood that the decision to medically transition was clearly the right one, and if the odds of the child losing the sense of gender dysphoria naturally were as low as the odds of a teenager changing from gay/lesbian to heterosexual in adulthood (which as I understand it, very seldom happens), then I’d be strongly in favor of all these procedures.

As it stands, though, I personally would have some real hesitation if I were (counterfactually) to have a pre-pubescent child who, right now, wanted to undergo this procedure. That is not because I’m against the procedures in general, as you can see how, and it’s also not because I’m against it for children, either categorically or in all possible epistemic cases.

The reason I’d have some real hesitations and doubts about it, instead, is as follows:

First, as I understand it, many gay and lesbian adults report having felt serious gender dysphoria in their teen or pre-teen years, though that gender dysphoria went away as they came to understand themselves as gay or lesbian. I’ve heard estimates, which seemed roughly plausible to me, that suggest that determining the lifelong gender self-identification of a child is far more difficult than determining the lifelong sexual orientation of a teenager or late pre-teen.

Second, I have heard insider reports, which I did not feel I could not dismiss as implausible, that many children who are seen for possible gender dysphoria are recommended for transition without the careful exploration of other possibilities, etc. that one would expect for any serious, life-altering medical decision, for good or bad, and some have said that they felt under considerable pressure to reach those favorable diagnoses for transition.

Both of these things are empirical matters on which I might be shown to be wrong. But neither of them stems from a general bias against transitioning, and neither of them has anything to do with adults transitioning after weighing up the risks and possible benefits on their own, at the age of maturity.

Third, I am not an expert on any of these things, and so any confidence I could have that such medical interventions on minors is a good idea must come in part from a deference to those who are experts. But I can only trust those experts if they have gone through the rigorous processes of scientific reasoning to reach their conclusions. And that in turn is only possible if the climate for academic, including scientific, discussion on these questions takes place in an intellectual environment committed to neutrality and fairness above all, and in which people never fear bad consequences for expressing contrary views or evidence that fails to support the politically preferred solution. And yet, I have seen much evidence that tells me that we are not at all in that sort of intellectual environment: in fact, many researchers who have written on the biological, medical and ethical questions here have been publicly attacked and even hounded out of their positions, in some cases, for holding the wrong views. It doesn’t take very many cases like that for others with doubts to get the picture and shut up about their concerns.

The actions of the people who exert this pressure could be mitigated if the academic community as a whole responded sharply to them and let it be clear that this kind of interference with serious inquiry will not be tolerated. But that has not happened at all. Given that, I think there is plenty of reason to treat positive reports on these procedures with a big grain of salt. That’s not because the reports can’t be true: they might be! Perhaps the scientific and other academic work that supports childhood transitioning is first-rate. But then we’re in a Gettier-type situation, thanks to the tolerance of nasty bullying and domineering behaviors mentioned above. Such behavior costs outsiders the opportunity to learn the truth.

Fourth, journalists and others in the mass media have also come under strong pressure for years now to silence all criticism of youth gender transitioning. Again, that isn’t to say that the criticism was strong enough to establish its case: for all I know, the criticism isn’t very good at all, and maybe there are powerful arguments against it. But it’s very difficult to figure out whether that is so or not, given those pressures.

Rather than go on to list further reasons I would have for uncertainty if I were a parent of a child with gender dysphoria, I’ll leave it at that. Just to be clear, though: I don’t mean to imply that no parents have good reasons for feeling confident enough about their children’s state to proceed, and I also acknowledge, again, that my lack of certainty on this matter may be due to incorrect empirical knowledge on my part.

But, given the state I find myself in at present (like, I think, many other people), it seems I may find myself having to weigh a certain and possibly lifelong harm, together with the possibility of regret, against other possible harms that must be taken seriously but may plausibly seem less certain. And in that situation, I don’t see how a decision to ask the child to wait can be ruled out as unreasonable (though it may turn out to have been the worse choice later on). And yet, as far as I can see, none of this long reasoning presumes that medical gender transitioning is in general a bad thing or something that ought to be avoided. I, certainly, don’t think that.

Hi again, Felix.

First: I am aware that, unlike me, many people would have qualms about allowing their young teenage children (again, hypothetical in my case) to pursue homosexual relationships with peers, or to wear clothing and makeup that is generally associated with children/teenagers/adults of the opposite sex. I wasn’t trying to defend or represent the views of those people, though: I just wanted to explain to Queer Philosopher my reason for thinking that being quite broadly liberal on these sorts of issues could be consistent with having principled reservations about some manifestations of youth transgender medicine.

Second, in response to your comment about what I’m recommending just being “routine care”, and your other comment about some people who take away the dolls, dresses, etc. of young boys who play with them: I agree entirely that it would just be standard care and due diligence for medical professionals to rule out alternative explanations for the (apparent) gender dysphoria: really, it’s the sort of thing any health professional ought to do when contemplating a major medical intervention with risks and possible down-sides.

But is this standard practice being followed? I wonder now whether an important part of the disagreement between you and me comes from our different estimations of what practices are being followed.

In fact, some of this might be in a bit of tension with what you say about taking away the dolls and dresses. In a BBC documentary (if memory serves) that I watched about Kenneth Zucker, who for many years was *the* doctor to see in Canada if your child seemed to exhibit signs of gender dysphoria, one of the things he did at the start was to try to rule out those alternative possibilities. For instance, a child starts claiming to be a girl, and playing with dolls. Is this because of a permanent psychological trait that is now coming to the surface for the first time? Or is it the result of something else — maybe the arrival of a new girl in the family who is suddenly getting all the attention? In many cases, it seems, Zucker would ask the parents to temporarily take away the dolls and dresses for a couple of weeks, while Zucker would continue to interview the child and try to get to the bottom of the desire to be a girl. In some cases, the child would lose interest in the whole thing soon enough, and the issue would go away. But in other cases, the child would keep insisting on the return of the girlish things, and no other plausible explanation would turn up. In those cases, Zucker would recommend that the parents give back the dresses and dolls, and begin considering the child as a candidate for transitioning of whatever sort seemed most appropriate.

However, as I understood it, Zucker was ultimately hounded out of his job for just this reason: his practice of considering alternative possibilities at first was deemed by certain activist groups to be unacceptable. They insisted instead on a medical practice of immediately affirming whatever new gender identity the child mentioned.

I’m curious: what do you think about that? Maybe we won’t be able to resolve what Zucker did or didn’t do, or why he was hounded out of his job. But do you agree with the view that children brought to such a medical office, who claim that they are a certain sex/gender, should be immediately and constantly affirmed in that assertion from that point on, with no questioning?

If you do think that, then how does it square, in your mind, with what you said about routine care?

Finally, you press me on why I give various amounts of weight to the testimony of putative whistleblowers, the parents of happily-transitioned children, and so on. Well, the fact is that I actually don’t know how much weight to give these various people! All I can tell you at this point is that I hear a number of people making conflicting points, and I don’t find that I can plausibly dismiss all the thing I’ve heard from one side or the other. I’m left not feeling sure about the right thing that ought to be done, though it’s a bit more complicated than that, as I explained above.

So, I don’t feel that I have the right answers on these questions. What I can say, though, is that in situations like these, I find it very difficult to trust people who insist that everything is settled and that we all need to agree to do this one thing, and that anyone who disagrees is a hateful human being. If the people who say those things also try to shut down discussion and silence their interlocutors, then I rule them out as serious sources of information, regardless of what they’re saying (and yes, it might turn out that they were right, but I can’t know that by trusting them: they’ve lost their right to be trusted).

Thanks, ostrasyn. I think that we’re getting to the nub of what we seem to disagree about, and it might be an empirical, non-moral issue.

You and I seem to agree that, if children give good evidence of having had spontaneous and recurrent feelings of gender dysphoria (I say spontaneous here to rule out the possibility of, say, the children having got the idea after spending hours each day watching a persuasive TikTok influencer), then it would be reasonable for a mental health professional to examine the child at some length, careful not to suggest or promote any particular outcome or diagnosis. If the mental health professional, following a fair and unbiased process of examination for an appropriately long period, concludes through diagnostic metrics set by the medical community through properly scientific inquiry that the child really does have profound gender dysphoria, and that that dysphoria gives all signs of being permanent, then it would be reasonable for the mental health professional to explore various types of transitioning with the parents and the child.

Where we disagree, it seems, is in our sense of what is actually going on in many of these clinics. Your impression is apparently that what I just described is already the more or less universal practice, and therefore that the critics of the so-called ‘gender-affirmative care’ approach are either misinformed about the current practices or else that they really seek to prevent anyone from transitioning.

From what I hear, on the other hand, I have a quite different impression of what is happening. My best sense right now is that what you seem to think is already happening is what most supporters of the ‘gender-affirmative care’ approach claim is being done, but that in fact there is tremendous pressure on these clinics, and within these clinics, on agreeing with the child’s immediate self-assessment. Failing to affirm that the gender a child claims to have really is that child’s gender is seen as a kind of affront against the child, and could be grounds for an attack by people with very hard-line views on the subject, for whom no amount of pressure is too much. Moreover, on my current understanding of things, there are many cases in which minors are routinely given an affirmative diagnosis, and medical interventions with possible lifelong consequences, are signed off on after just one or two short meetings, in which no alternatives are explored.

I know that you will disagree that that is a fair description of what is happening. But from what I hear, I think it might be.

Would you agree that, if things are the way I just suggested they might be, then there is a problem here worth addressing, and that it would be wrong to pillory those people who are trying to change it in the face of strong pressure not to?

Hello, ostrasyn:

1. On what ‘the critics’ of the more radical versions of the gender-affirming care model are saying: there are all sorts of critics, and they hold all sorts of positions. It seems that what you and others have done in these threads is confine your attention to a small subset of critics — in fact, as far as I can see so far, just one critic (Helen Joyce) and then treat her as representing the critical perspective.

As I recall, if one looks at even just Joyce’s overall position, one finds (as I recall) that that cherry-picked quote is rather out of context. But even if it isn’t, there are is a growing number of people who, despite their initial confidence in the more committed gender-critical approach, have come to have doubts about either the way it’s been implemented or about the way in which people are attacked for raising any doubts about these things. Even the ACLU(!) has actively engaged in attempts to stop the spread of at least one book that raised doubts about some manifestations of gender-affirming therapy model for children. Even many people who strongly support transitioning in most cases have a problem with that, for what I think are good reasons. If dissenting views are suppressed, then why should anyone think that those views are being considered in theory and practice? If there are some problems in the implementation of this approach, the fact that people are actively hindering criticism, by itself, gives all of us — again, including people who support these therapies in general — good grounds for withdrawing our confidence and support.

If you insist on representing all doubters and critics as holding radically anti-trans views, you just send a signal to the critics that you cannot be trusted (since they will be able to see that you have got their motivations wrong), and you also give the impression of attacking a straw man in Joyce (an attack can be a straw man fallacy even if there is someone out there who holds the view, if your attack on an extreme version of the view is intended to count as an attack against more nuanced versions of the view that you are ignoring).

2. It seems that you are mixing up two different things that I am saying. I do indeed maintain that the epistemic and dialectical practices of any legitimate academic discipline must be fair and neutral. But I have never claimed that individuals who engage in inquiry have to reach no decision on any matter. It’s just that the decisions they come to qua members of that discipline must be arrived at in a neutral manner, without pressing down one side of the scale by biasing the inquiry. Also, I am in no way neutral (nor should any of us be) on whether an activist methodology is enough to disqualify something from being a legitimate discipline or sub-discipline.

3. I ask again: “Would you agree that, if things are the way I just suggested they might be, then there is a problem here worth addressing, and that it would be wrong to pillory those people who are trying to change it in the face of strong pressure not to?”

You made some comments after this, but didn’t answer the question. What I’m suggesting here is that we can treat this as a critical experiment. I am not just making unfalsifiable claims here: I’m genuinely interested in being shown to be wrong if I am. I’m saying that, if we investigate this and it turns out that you’re right about the approach that is actually being followed in many of these clinics, then I will admit that I was mistaken. And I’m asking whether you, in turn, will also agree to change your mind if it turns out that you have been mistaken about what is going on in the clinics.

Will you?

Thanks for the replies.

1. I can simplify what I just said about the constant references to Joyce this way: even if she takes the hard-line position you and others represent her as taking (and I’m not sure about that), it doesn’t follow from that that all the other people who have raised doubts about the strong gender-affirming approach to youth gender medicine take that view. In fact, many of these doubters take a much milder view. If your position is meant to defend that approach against its best critics — and that is how I’ve been interpreting your aim here — then it isn’t fair to refer to Joyce’s position (if that is her position) as *the* gender-critical position, and in turn use that to represent anyone who has doubts about the theory and implementation of the gender-affirming model.
2. My comments about an activist methodology are a reference to, among other things, this comment by Talia Mae Bettcher, above: “Trans philosophy is a kind of philosophical practice in resistance to trans oppression. In this respect, it is analogous to feminist philosophy, which is practiced in resistance to sexist oppression.” I’ve been arguing here that a sub-discipline of philosophy or of any science, including ‘trans philosophy’ or ‘feminist philosophy’, loses its legitimacy as a sub-discipline if it is defined as a practice in resistance to, or in support of, some particular goal. Academic disciplines and sub-disciplines are meant to be collectively authoritative on the questions they address, but they cannot play that role if certain partisan ends are already assumed by their methodology. But that doesn’t prevent an inquirer working within that sub-discipline from arriving at some conclusion fairly and then engaging in activism on that basis. If Byrne is doing that, or if (as is certainly the case) feminist and trans activists engage in activism on the basis of their research, that in itself presents no problems on my view, so long as the inquiry that inspired the activism does not presume its conclusions as part of its methodology.
3. Again, what I’m proposing is a way of resolving something we seem to disagree about. I’m saying that if it turns out that I’m wrong on that set of empirical assumptions (about due care not being taken to explore other options in these clinical settings, etc.), then that would be sufficient for me to change my mind, and that if I’m right, then I’d like to know in advance whether you would agree to change your mind. If you are, it would be worth my while to present the reasons I have for doubt; if not, then it seems to be a waste of time. But now you seem to concede(?) that there may well be problems of the sort I’ve mentioned. In that case, I’m glad we agree, but doesn’t it follow that you should be a little more tolerant of critics who are trying to cast light on those problems and address them?

However, as I understood it, Zucker was ultimately hounded out of his job for just this reason: 

That’s incorrect.

So, I don’t feel that I have the right answers on these questions. What I can say, though, is that in situations like these, I find it very difficult to trust people who insist that everything is settled and that we all need to agree to do this one thing, and that anyone who disagrees is a hateful human being. If the people who say those things also try to shut down discussion and silence their interlocutors, then I rule them out as serious sources of information, regardless of what they’re saying (and yes, it might turn out that they were right, but I can’t know that by trusting them: they’ve lost their right to be trusted).

I think everyone can sympathise with this to one degree or another. However, I think there’s also a significant issue here, in that you seem to have formed a rule whereby if someone is said to be “coming under fire” for “just asking questions,” you are inclined to conclude that the persons doing the alleged “silencing” must be disregarded “as serious sources of information.” Maybe they should be disregarded as such. But, in relying on such a rule, and not at looking at the substantive matters yourself, it’s also quite possible that you will disregard the most credible sources of information.

Credible sources can be cast as “silencing” non-credible ones very easily. Anti-vaccine movements have been doing this for decades, claiming that they’re “come under fire” for their “reasonable concerns” over such and such. Maybe, at some point, credible sources did take their “reasonable concerns” seriously, addressing them or outlining why they aren’t reasonable. But nothing in that process prevents the anti-vaxxer from continuing to claim that they merely have “reasonable concerns.” And now, with credible sources having given up on actively engaging them, they can claim that they are being “ignored,” or if credible sources respond negatively, they can even claim to be “coming under fire” merely for raising concerns. Following your rule would lead you to, not necessarily taking the anti-vaxxer’s side, but certainly being much more sympathetic to them than you might otherwise be, and much more suspicious of credible sources that are variously either “ignoring” or “silencing” the anti-vaxxer.

I think it’s inescapable that one must exercise judgment, so far as one can, on the substantive matters, when those matters are presented for consideration, rather than relying on surface-level features, such as rhetorical invocations of rigour or appeals to some fundamental principle of free inquiry. Those rhetorical invocations and appeals come cheaply; they can represent both genuine concerns over a scholar being unfairly maligned and having their work suppressed and a crank or charlatan trying to draw attention to themselves and their work, building themselves up as a defiant Galileo, whispering—no, loudly proclaiming—”and, yet, it moves.” (The Intellectual Dark Web was notorious for exactly this sort of posturing.)

That said, I think we should also not be too narrow in our application of grace, or too arrogant to think that we are above giving explanations when someone is earnestly asking for them. To bring it back to anti-vaccine movements, there are of course people who are committed anti-vaxxers, whose questions often aren’t sincere but intended as “gotchas”—theirs is often a performance seeking to establish them as that Galileo, or something else sympathetic or facially credible. But there are also people who do have genuine questions, who might not know what to do with all the information they’ve received; some of it’s misinformation, and they aren’t sure how to go about sorting through it, figuring it out. So I think some level of grace is to always be given, just as we would always hope to receive grace when asking what might be taken by others as a silly question or even as a troll. (To be clear, it might be; one of the difficulties it that we as individuals can’t always tell where someone is coming from. In this too we can’t avoid having to make some sort of judgment about how to proceed or even whether to. This is why, as I said at the beginning of this part of this comment, I think everyone can sympathise with this to one degree or another.)

> Have you got any actual quote from Zucker, or objective evidence of some other kind, that would confirm that you are right to say that my understanding was incorrect?

Sorry to jump in here on Felix’s behalf, I have that bookmarked. The following is from JM Bailey’s “The Man Who Would be Queen” (page 31, my emphasis).

“Zucker thinks that an important goal of treatment is to help the children accept their birth sex and to avoid becoming transsexual. … he thinks that the kind of therapy he practices helps reduce this risk.”

And (page 32, my emphasis):

“Zucker believes that toleration and encouragement of feminine play and dress prevents the child from accepting his maleness. … Failure to intervene increases the chances of transsexualism in adulthood, which Zucker considers a bad outcome.”

I think we can consider Bailey to be a reliable source on Zucker’s beliefs.

Thanks very much, both.

Queer Philosopher, I have been meaning to read _The Man Who Would Be Queen_ for some time. I agree that it seems fair to treat Bailey as a reliable source on Zucker’s beliefs.

Now that I’ve read the passage you mention (and a few pages more on either side), I see that you are correct on this matter about Zucker. I concede that point. Thank you for helping me become better informed about this!

> I’ll also ignore here the acts/omissions distinction that I believe most people, including most philosophers, hold as morally relevant, and which I think tells against your judgment

I considered mentioning this earlier. The acts/omissions distinction is not very powerful in medical ethics. If a patient presents with a medical indication, providing treatment and denying treatment are both acts (either can constitute malpractice, etc.).

> I want to be clear that I, personally, concede to your position more than you might imagine

That’s ok. I don’t think you are a bad person (I’ll not respond much to your description of your personal feelings). I merely think that you have been partially had by a _very_ effective propaganda campaign that led you to see people like me as on the wrong side of academic freedom.

I had little hope of convincing you that the argument has an anti-trans supposition. But I hope to have convinced you that people like me have principled and systematic reasons to think that it does. More on this at the very end of this post.

I can’t comment much on the empirical matters you raised. Two notes, for the record: (re “Second”): I would encourage you to re-read the “insider reports” after our discussion on what is anti-trans, and consider whether they might import some anti-trans assumptions. If you mean the reports I am thinking off, you might be surprised at what you find. (re “First”): I personally know of cases where someone was dysphoric as a child, “worked through it” in their 20ies, and then the dysphoria came back with a vengeance later in life. Make of that what you will.

Finally, here’s another places where I think the assumption creeps in.

> If (say) 99.99% of patients who underwent these procedures as children strongly agreed throughout adulthood that the decision to medically transition was clearly the right one, and if the odds of the child losing the sense of gender dysphoria naturally were as low as the odds of a teenager changing from gay/lesbian to heterosexual in adulthood

You lay down a requirement here: very few detransitioners. But as I pointed out earlier, that is only one of _two_ bad outcomes.

Say we do as you say and reduce the rate of adult detransitioners to .01%. But maybe this comes at the cost of underprescribing, so that the rate of patients who were denied youth treatment and as adults deeply regret this rises to 99.99%. Then we haven’t avoided negative outcomes, we only have shifted their burden to one cohort.

Again, a principle in medical ethics that might not be very familiar to most philosophers: it is not sufficient to study the effects of the intervention itself, one must simultaneously study the effects of denying the intervention.

That is, the position “you can do youth gender medicine if you can promise no detransitioners” ignores the needs of trans children, and the irreversible harms inflicted on them by endogenous puberty.

(For the record: 99.99% avoidance of permanent negative consequences is an absurdly high standard in medicine. Most surgical procedures score way, _way_ below that.)

> But how to determine what ought to be done?

That really is the question!

As you note, medicine never has the benefit of hindsight. Risks needs to be weighed, and (if possible), pre-emptive steps should be taken _mitigate_ a bad outcome, if one occurs. The more we know about the risks, the better.

All that I am asking for is that the risks for trans people are treated with equal seriousness as the risks for cis people. The people I call anti-trans don’t do that.

My personal view on what is going on (that places me, by your reckon, on the wrong side of academic freedom) is this:

A lot of this work has been done already, over the last four decades. The anti-trans people that hit the scene about 10 years ago are angry that this work does not sufficiently prioritize the risks for cis people over the risks for trans people. This is why I oppose them, why I think their work is unserious, and why I am not considering them equal participants in this debate.

Does this mean you think a young man, under-18, should be prevented from obtaining treatment for the discomfort he feels due to enlarged breast tissue—owing to concerns about the risks, the potential for regret, and so on? He must await adulthood to even be considered for such treatment and, even then, must take into account risks, etc.? Or a young woman, under-18, cannot seek out, for example, reproductive healthcare, including abortion? She must await adulthood, owing again to the risks, the potential for regret, and so on?

Why? Are you not concerned about the risks, the regret that they might feel, etc.?

Incidentally, I don’t think that this situation is entirely different from the other types of case I mentioned earlier. Take marriage or sex, for instance. Suppose I have a fifteen-year-old daughter who falls in love with an eighteen-year-old at her school. The eighteen-year-old is very keen to get married and start a family, and proposes marriage to my daughter. My daughter wants to become pregnant with his child right away. If I tell her that she is welcome to marry him and/or have his child when she turns eighteen and he is twenty-one, but that she’s too young now to make that decision, she might respond as follows:

“Look at you, so worried about the risk of my regretting the decision to have a family later on. You don’t care that I want to do this, that I have thought about this, and that I have never been as sure about anything else as I am about this. If you could see what is in my heart now, you would understand that there is no risk that I’ll change my mind, and if you knew him, you’d know that he won’t change his mind, either. What you apparently haven’t considered is that there’s no way to avoid the risk of harm, either way: if I don’t become pregnant with his child, and if I tell him instead that I won’t have a family with him for at least three more years, then it’ll be too late! Our lives will be different, we won’t have the anchor that will keep us together, he won’t believe that I’m serious, we’ll lose our momentum… you can’t tell me that it will all be the same! By forbidding me to do this with him, you could be destroying my chance at the life of my dreams with him — and I might never be happy with anyone else!”

The thing is, she’d be right about there being a risk, either way: there is a chance that, if only she could go off with him now, their love would continue into a beautiful future together, and she is also right that, by destroying the momentum of their relationship by making her wait three years, I could take away what might be her only chance at happiness.

But there’s also a chance that I’d be saving her from a choice she might come to regret, or that would make her life worse.

It’s true that I can’t avoid taking a risk with my child’s happiness. But I don’t think that’s a reason for saying that it would be wrong for me to try to stop her from doing it, if I judged that it was a bad idea.

I also don’t think that it must be wrong for society to agree to make it difficult or impossible for people to be married and start a family at fifteen, even though that, too, might block people from their only chance at happiness.

Is this situation close enough to the medical gender transitioning case? Not necessarily: the difference in the likelihood of the good or bad outcomes, etc. are relevant. I don’t know how to assess those.

The point, however, is this: it shows that even though we cannot avoid the risk of making children’s lives significantly worse off by preventing them from making decisions we would allow to adults, it does not follow that deciding to prevent those decisions is properly motivated by an underlying bias against the thing the child wants to do. (Neither the parent in my story nor society as a whole has a general bias against marriage or having children — just against fifteen-year-olds doing that).

Bear in mind that, with regard to arguments, anti-trans commentators do have “different ones about adults and minors.”

For young people, they variously claim that they are too young to make any such decisions, even for decisions that don’t involve any type of pharmaco-therapeutic intervention. The reasoning is that one decision might lead to another and to another, and so if we can nip it in bud early enough, maybe we can stop it from happening. Maybe we can prevent deviant trajectories and put them on the proper (i.e., cis-heteronormative) path. For adults, the argument shifts to saying that they can’t be genuine about it; that they must be doing it for some nefarious or fetishistic reason. Because if it were otherwise, why didn’t it come up sooner, such as when they were younger?

I think it’s entirely reasonable to infer that these lines of argument, taken together, amount to someone “holding that it is a bad thing to transition.” Because the arguments are intended to prevent that from happening, with the implicit view that it would be undesirable.

As I mentioned in February, I think Joyce provides an example of this:

When someone like Joyce says, “every one of those people is, basically, a huge problem to a sane world,” and when they make clear that this applies regardless of the person’s happiness or their satisfaction with the care they receive, it becomes difficult to take seriously claims that their policy proposals are being driven principally by concerns about “the state of the evidence.” When lobby groups like Our Duty claim that “it should be the objective of any advanced civilisation presented with this problem to target 100% desistance, and as early as possible,” we can’t pretend to be mystified or uncertain about what they mean.

To be clear, I’m not saying that Lewis is doing the same thing as Joyce. That is to say, I don’t think such a conclusion is as straightforward. But she is doing something along the lines of this.

Justin, the swindle you describe goes the other way. That is, bigots have always taken themselves to be reasonable, and have always taken themselves to be either proponents of “Common Sense” or as “Heterodox Thinkers”—sometimes both. It isn’t uncommon for bigots to rationalise their bigotry by saying that they just have “reasonable concerns,” that they are “just asking questions,” and so on. But those concerns eventually have to get spelled out, and those questions may require them to come up with some answers of their own. In short, they have to come up with some content, or else they are commenting from a position that doesn’t really merit taking seriously, and they want to be taken seriously.

Spelling things out, staking things out, producing some content that can bear examination obviously entails that it will be examined. At that point, retreating to the cover of “reasonable concerns” and “just asking questions” only works as a rhetorical move, not a substantive one—after all, when spelled out, your concerns might not be reasonable after all; your questions might have answers that aren’t what you expected, or maybe you were asking the wrong questions in the first place, etc. What you’re missing here then is the need to exercise judgment on the content. This may be because you want to avoid commenting on it. That’s fine. But it’s a bit strange then to insist that others must perpetually withhold judgment, especially when there is content put forward for their judgment and when they are engaged with the substantive issues in a way that you are not.

There are a few things to say here, I think. First, you make much of not endorsing “activism … [as] a legitimate methodology, or engaging in other manifestations of social pressure to spread their ideas.” But why isn’t Byrne considered an “activist,” in your view? I’d say that he is a “GC” activist, and I don’t think he is being smeared at all; he is being criticised for his work; that is, his commentary and his activism. I’m not sure why you are taking Byrne seriously as a philosopher and his critics as merely “activists,” but it clearly advantages Byrne for others to take it as a given that he is doing Very Serious work, whereas everyone else who sees that work for what it is is an merely an activist. As I noted earlier, this also has broader implications, particularly as the work under discussion is intended to inveigh on civil rights issues and have relevance to policymaking.

Second, how is the discipline’s reputation not at risk already? If philosophy, as a profession, comes to be seen as unsafe for sexual and gender minorities, or for other marginalised communities, such that people belonging to those communities feel that they cannot participate in the professional community as their full selves, is that not a reputational risk? Maybe it helps to broaden the discussion, because it’s not as though this is necessarily unique to philosophy as a profession; if STEM fields like astronomy are seen to protect sexists and would-be sex pests, is that not a problem for the field’s reputation? You seem to think that reputational risks arise solely from poor methodological practice, or at least that’s what your focus has been so far. But such risks are also conferred by practitioners’ behaviour and what is normalised in the professional community.

It becomes advantageous for practitioners who behave poorly to deflect to methodological concerns whenever this is discussed, to say that their critics aren’t using the discipline’s methodology correctly. To draw on another discipline by analogy again, to say that women aren’t good at math and that’s why they don’t participate as often in the astronomy community or aren’t in as many senior positions in the community’s institutions. Or to say that, in taking certain measures to make the professional community more open to them, we’d be loosening methodological standards to an unacceptable degree, thereby tarnishing the profession’s reputation for rigour. (Notice how close this gets us to the right-wing rhetoric of “DEI hires”?)

To push back against this is to be charged with activism. I don’t think activism is a bad thing per se, and I don’t think responding to those who’ve been cast as activists by gesturing at methodology is sufficient to address the concerns they raise. It reads more as a move to dismiss them, to hand-wave them away by rhetorically invoking rigour, as though that and that alone is the reason why the professional community is the way it is, and the way it must remain.

…from the proper vantage point of seeking the truth through fair, reasoned, impartial inquiry, that activism in a certain direction is defined as part of the methodology of the discipline, then the discipline is clearly not a truth-seeking one any longer, if it ever was. It therefore does not belong at a university, particularly not a public university.

Justin, do you think this could cause problems for a whole host of fields? Take Critical Race Theory, for example. In the view of those who, let’s say, want to preserve existing racial hierarchies and the systems in which they are embedded, it’s “not a truth-seeking [discipline / field], if it ever was.” Or to go back to a familiar example: vaccine science. I have no idea what leads you to believe that you can easily identify what “the proper vantage point” is for determining this, much less how you think you can do that from a great distance and without engaging with the substantive matters those disciplines and fields are about. As I said earlier, I think this makes it more likely that you are going to be fooled by people making some very cheap rhetorical appeals.

…

In that case, I think the conference organizers and participants should reject my demands out of hand, no matter how subjectively unsafe I claim to feel (or actually feel) if those demands are not met. Otherwise, the discipline may even deserve to lose some of its reputation on the grounds that it seems to be losing its neutrality and becoming, even if in small part, a hostage to Canadian interests.

You’ve written quite a few paragraphs here but, to be frank, none of them address my argument. My argument was that philosophy, as a profession, can have its reputation tarnished for reasons other than practitioners failing to adhere to the proper methodology. More specifically, that it can acquire a negative reputation due to the behaviour of practitioners and whether (or to what extent) that behaviour is widely tolerated or even defended and normalised in the professional community.

Further to that argument, I pointed out that what you are fundamentally doing here is defending and normalising that behaviour by claiming that it’s somehow (in ways you’ve yet to explain) part of the methodology or, more precisely, that we need to tolerate such behaviour for methodological reasons, that we would less rigorous otherwise.

I drew the parallel here to the usual right-wing rhetoric around “DEI hires,” and to claims, made in certain STEM fields, that ensuring the field is open to those who’ve traditionally struggled to participate in it would unacceptably compromise the field’s rigour.

None of what you’ve written above addresses this, except in the most superficial way. Your choice of examples (e.g., Jack and his guitar) also suggest a level of flippancy with which you read “participate in the professional community as [their] full selves.”

“The DEI hires, doing philosophy?! In this university?! What next? Jack gets to play his guitar in the nude during department meetings?” Yes, these are definitely very comparable things. A sharp insight.

Yes: to the extent that ‘critical race theory’ is committed in advance to a political view or agenda, it could not count as a legitimate academic discipline, for the reasons I mentioned (academic disciplines and sub-disciplines cannot presume such things).

I think what’s coming into view here is that you’re simply a conservative and/or a reactionary, and this posturing about Neutrality, Objectivity, and Rigour is simply intended to buttress your more general conservatism by giving you reasons to dismiss scholarship that takes a critical look at right-wing ideologies. That is to say, I think your methodological priors are actually posterior to those views. And this becomes especially evident in the way you differentially treat commentators who are anti-trans (invoking methodological principles on their behalf to elevate their position in discourse) and those who are not (invoking those same principles to characterise them as “activists” and thereby disregard them). Take, for example, this:

But calling someone anti-trans carries with it the convenient implication that her *reasons* for disagreeing (to whatever extent) with some view in the set of orthodoxies was motivated not by any rational grounds for doubt, but rather by hatred of trans people.

I find it rather sneaky (and this is far from the only place I’ve seen it) that the term used here is ‘anti-trans’ rather than, say, ‘inconsistent with trans orthodoxy’. It implies that the person is opposed not to a set of doctrines, but rather to a protected category of people.

Note the framing of anti-trans commentators as just those whose commentary is “inconsistent with trans orthodoxy.” Why not instead characterise such commentators as “defenders of cis-heteronormative orthodoxy” and their critics as, well, critics of that? Because you need to position them in a particular way in the discourse—they are the ones who are “dissenting” and being “suppressed” and “smeared” for “just asking questions” about the “orthodoxy.” That isn’t a “neutral” framing, and it’s definitely not a framing that you can justify solely on methodological grounds, your ceaseless appeal to those grounds notwithstanding.

Scientists who work on vaccines work in the field of medicine. The methodology of medicine and its sub-disciplines cannot, for the reasons I keep explaining, presume the truth of any answers to questions within that discipline or sub-discipline: again, I am just making the straightforward point that that cannot be part of the methodology of the sub-discipline, and not (of course!) that no medical researcher can arrive at, or advocate for, or try to implement, some policy about vaccines.

Which in no way addresses my point, which is that there’s no methodological principle in medicine that requires us to perpetually relitigate the claims of anti-vaxxers because someone makes a cheap rhetorical appeal along the lines of “dissenting” from or “just asking questions” about “vaccine orthodoxy.”

For instance, even if the scientists who develop vaccines go on a wild spree around town, keeping people awake at night and getting their entire research group permanently banned from the city where they did this, and even if they treated people horribly while doing that, we could still point to their work as authoritative.

Their medical orthodoxy, you mean? But not if we “dissent” from it, Justin! Then, while baselessly invoking “rigour,” we can reverse course on their work.

That’s my point: that the essential thing any discipline needs if its findings are to be taken seriously is an adherence to the objective norms of research.

Which is neither here nor there with regard to my point, which is that “adherence to the objective norms of research” can be (and has been) invoked to excuse and normalise bad behaviour. I gave you examples. You haven’t engaged them.

I never said anything about ‘DEI hires’: I don’t even think I’ve ever used that term before writing out this sentence! You just came up with that out of nowhere.

I merely pointed out that your idea that we should be able to do our professional work as our ‘full selves’ seems dubious without further explanation of what that means and what it is meant to entail.

I don’t buy this, to be frank. I think you know exactly what it means to say that we should be able to do our professional work as our full selves. The problem is that you regard being openly LGBTQ and working in philosophy as being equivalent to someone playing his guitar in the nude during a department meeting. That is to say, you see the former as being as optional and as unnecessary as the latter and, just as crucially, as annoying and rude as the latter. That you are, in effect, arguing to maintain some sort of heteronormative, shall we say, “orthodoxy”(?), doesn’t seem to occur to you; that there’s no methodological principle to invoke here doesn’t occur to you either. It’s not the “objective norms of research” that make professional philosophy unwelcoming to many; it’s philosophers, especially the ones cynically invoking those “objective norms” to obfuscate the actual norms they’re defending.

You have unusually long patience

Justin:

Since you are back to discussing “proper methodology”, “rigour”, and “proper philosophy”, among other “proper” things, let me point everyone to the extensive discussion with you on this topic elsewhere in the thread — a discussion that ended with you simply not responding. As well as repeatedly ignoring a question. I suppose that’s part of some kind of “proper methodology”.

Exactly. No matter what their gender identity, a philosopher who can’t handle running into someone who disagrees with them on vital issues is like a paramedic who can’t handle the sight of blood.

This seems like such a self-serving response to me. I mean, pointing out that the discipline, in practice, often uncritically perpetuates cis-heteronormative dominance is itself an exercise of the actual discipline. It’s odd to say that those explaining why this is a problem for the discipline, and how it hampers it in various ways, are somehow not “grappl[ing] with unsettling ideas and worldviews quite different from their own” while you have your finger on the pulse of what the “actual discipline” is in its purest, most authentic form.

Willow, since you mention you’re going to be away from the thread for a while, I’m going to make my followup response into a post on my blog and Substack, on Sunday which is my usual posting day. (Hopefully that also gives the discussion an additional audience, which I think it merits). I’ll post a link to it here when the posts go up; anyone who wants to make sure not to miss it can subscribe to the blog or the Substack.

For now, I’ll just note that you are correct I haven’t engaged the stories in the zine, because I have no quarrel with them. I think the zine is a fine idea. My concern is with the silencing of unorthodox views (from Stock to Tuvel), and with justifications for that silencing that I find entirely unpersuasive.