Read on Twitter
So, while we're on the subject of techno-Platonism ( @PankhurstEM ), I've decided to read Martine Rothblatt's 'From Transgender to Transhuman: A Manifesto on the Freedom of Form.' I think I'm going to have to livetweet some of it as I go, otherwise my brain might explode.
Rothblatt is a satellite tech and pharmaceutical billionaire, who was also featured in NYMag back in 2014 http://www.bkmag.com/2014/09/10/the-trouble-with-used-to-be-a-man-on-the-medias-trans-vocabulary/ (nice bit of thought policing while glossing over the fact that yeah, the power was gained while he was a man...totally irrelevant I'm sure)
The main profile is here: http://nymag.com/nymag/rss/business/martine-rothblatt-transgender-ceo/ And contains this gem:
Rothblatt has said in one of their TED-interviews that they have a female soul. Which apparently doesn't extend to making sure everyone gets fed properly. That's still the vagina-person's job. So it's obvs v. important to make sure there's no words to describe those people.
Okay, so there's a foreward by some dude about how very progressive all this abolishing-sex-business is which I'm going to skip over...(Racism! Freedom! Hippies! American Dream!) and I'll start with the preface to the second edition.
It's the second edition because the book was originally published in 1995 as 'The Apartheid of Sex' - because yes, the recognition of human sexual dimorphism is *exactly* like a cultural and political regime brutally subjugating a colonized people.
So, Rb starts from straight up mind-body dualism. Bodies are just form, flesh houses, for the real self inside. And that real self can be uploaded into computers (which it can't), because our minds are just "neural connection contents." Whatever the fuck that means.
[SRSLY, DO THESE PEOPLE REALLY NOT FEEL ANYTHING FROM THE NECK DOWN????????]
This is such techno-gibberish. The entire thing is circular, because if you understand a human being as analogous to a machine/computer, and a mind as data, then it follows that you can transfer a mind to a computer. But it's an ANALOGY stupid. And not a good one.
The thing about memories is interesting, because Henri Bergson would argue that the accumulation of memories/history is central to the livingness of things. Our uniqueness is a product of our histories (which are also, I think, stored in our bodies)...
So here we the first statement of what it is to be transgender. What's notable is the complete inability to uncouple 'gender appearance' from 'gross sexual anatomy.' Affirming just the first part of the statement would make you a feminist, but if 'gender appearance' >
'always depends on gross sexual anatomy' (which it doesn't) then it follows that to free 'gender appearance' you have to undermine sex (which you don't). So, we find what we've found arguing about this. No sex/gender distinction.
Okaaaay. So we have extreme mind/body dualism (the body is just an inert fleshhouse) plus no sex/gender distinction (the flesh house completely determines the gender expression). How does that work??????
Right. Yeah, let's start a political movement based on role-playing games and the idea that we can all be griffins and centaurs if we want to be. GREAT PLAN.
Rb then goes on the the analogy between apartheid and sex. As we saw with the sex/gender thing, this all hangs on an inability to understand the difference between 'difference' and hierarchy. I don't remember anyone arguing that the way to deal with apartheid was to stipulate >
that Black South Africans did not exist. Which would be idiotic, and offensive af. This idea that the only way to erase hierarchy is by denying difference is a classic failure of patriarchal thinking, and frequently, it's a pretext for erasing the thing that is different.
You're on glue mate. <End of preface>
I was going to carry on tomorrow, but I've read on a bit, and I just needed to add... The picture on the front of the book is Rb's Second Life avatar. She's called Vitology Destiny (WTF). And as you can see, she's a Black woman. WTAAAF.
@threader_app Can you still unroll this?
