Aaaaand, we're back. All the fun of the techno-Platonist-dystopia-fair. Martine Rothblatt 'From Transgender to Transhuman' (link to part 1 https://twitter.com/janeclarejones/status/1021418876222001152) Chapter 1 - 'Billions of Sexes.' Everyone sitting (un)comfortably?

So, first off I'm just going to say, this book is so damn confused it's going to be hard to parse it easily. There is a complete, utter, and abiding refusal to understand the distinction between material differences and what culture does with those differences

laid over an in-itself-confused effort to argue that there are no material differences (because everything is a spectrum and it's only our minds that make distinctions and that's bad because 'discrimination' and even if there are differences they don't mean anything anyway).

This passage is a good e.g. of what we're up against. Rb starts the chapter by talking about the culture of primogeniture, then talks about race (we'll come back to that), and then runs it into sex. And then we get a claim like the one in blue here.

The distinction between 'child/bastard' is entirely cultural. The distinction between 'black/white' is a cultural hierarchy laid on top of a biological continuum.

The distinction between 'male/female' is (let's just say Rb means gender here, because it's almost never clear) a cultural hierarchy laid on top of a biological difference (with a tiny number of intermediate cases). Ergo: THEY ARE NOT ALL THE SAME KIND OF THING.

So race: This is such a clusterfuck I can't even. Racism is bad (Okay). Now racism is over! (UM) 'Apparent' (OMG) African Americans can now do whatever they want! (No. They. Can't.) White people can be Rastas! (Erm). Race is a 'choosable culture.' (Get. To. Fuck.)

The language of commodification is threaded through the whole argument (*billionaire writes social theory SURPRISE!*). Race and sex are not not a fucking 'lifestyle choice.' Towards the end of the chapter re: human reproduction/IVF, we also get this beauty:

So, sex differences. I'm just going to go through and list the claims, because it's all just throw-a-ton-of-mud-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks.

1. 'Genital shape' is, apparently, 'the most arbitrary basis' for dividing humans into classes. What on earth does 'arbitrary' means here?? And what about secondary sexual characteristics??? I thought it was us who were obsessed with what's in people's pants????

2. Childbearing may have had something to do with this. But that only became relevant after the evil discriminators made an arbitrary genital-based classification. And after the division of labour?????

3. Now, (just like race yeah?), who does the childbearing and childrearing is irrelevant to the 'division of society.' It's all just one long breezy capitalist choosy-choice-choice! HURRAH!

SEXISM DOES NOT EXIST KLAXON. (Like, this whole chapter is a naturalistic-fallacy-in-reverse car crash. Something should not exist, and voila!, it doesn't. Which is pretty germane to the arguments we've been having over the last few years...)

4. Okay, now we get to the spectrum arguments. a) Chromosomal variation b) Different levels of hormones means there is a 'continuum of male and female possibilities' c) What about the infertile people???? d) Intersex, aaaand, e) NIPPLES ON MEN INDICATES 'UNIVERSAL INTERSEXUALITY'

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

(So, actually, I just looked this up. The males of all mammals (the clue might be in the word there) have nipples, because they develop during gestation prior to sexual differentiation.

So, Rb's claim is true - insofar as there is a stage in utero before we sexually differentiate when we are not sexually differentiated. Which is to say, meaningless).

Okay, back to throwing mud at the wall. Now 'thought patterns' (OH GOD). Maybe sexed brains are different? If they are, maybe there are intersexed brains? Maybe sexed brains don't affect behaviour? If they do affect behaviour, it doesn't mean we should use it to classify people.

This is what Derrida, following Freud, calls 'kettle-logic.' It comes from a passage in 'The Interpretation of Dreams' where Freud compares the unconscious to a man who borrows a kettle from a neighbour and returns it damaged.

When asked to explain he says a) the kettle isn't damaged b) it was damaged when he borrowed it and c) he never borrowed it in the first place. No wonder arguing with these people has been driving us BATSHIT.

Okay, it's getting late and I'm getting tired - nothing to do with trying to hack my way through a thicket of kettle-logic-techno-babble I'm sure. The next section of this chapter is called 'New Feminist Thinking.' And on that ominous sounding cliffhanger... night all x

So, DUM DUM DUM.... 'New Feminist Thinking' (aka, here I cherrypick some feminist quotes and use them to support my not-very-feminist thinking). Quote the first:

'SHOULD NOT be treated' =/= 'ARE not treated.' This is the whole fucking problem right there. You cannot undo patriarchy with a magic wand and unicorns people.

Then there's something from Bade Ginsburg about how it would be nice for men to help with childcare which is read by Rb to mean 'childcare has nothing to do with women.' And then of course, there's the Beauvoir quote - ARGHHHHHHH.

[It's rhetoric, about female socialization (that thing you don't believe in remember?), not an assertion that female people are not born female. Why do we even have to say these things??????]

And now we get to the slippery move that the 'argument' turns on, viz. 'Feminists say women shouldn't be treated as members of a sex class and it's but a 'short step' (AH-HA-HA) from that to our 'thesis' (that's too kind) that SEX CLASS IS IRRELEVANT AND/OR DOESN'T EXIST'

No, it's not a fucking 'short-step. It's a giant Neil-Armstrongesque cosmic leap in ten league boots. One in which you nattily jump over the *entire* structure of patriarchy as an EXISTING system of sex-based oppression and simultaneously erase feminism as a liberation movement.

Because who needs a liberation movement when we could just solve the problem by playing let's pretend??? And really, those people who keep on insisting on pointing at the problem are just SUCH A DRAG.

So, tell me, do we *really* believe that Rb - and all the others spouting this shit - believe a sentence like this one. Is it possible that they *cannot* distinguish the fact of sexual dimorphism from the structure laid on top of it. Do they really care? Or is it just strategy?

So, I'm going to spare you the next section 'Scientific Developments' - in which we learn that reproduction may be a thing but is not really a thing because we can implant zygotes in cavities near male baboon's intestines.

More 'feminism says sex-based oppression does not exist' brainsploding BS:

Then there's a section on 'Transgenderism' which, wey-hey, at least recognizes that there are both transexuals and transvestites involved - although doesn't analyze what that might mean. Notably, there's no explicit 'trans women are women' claim. Instead, we get this:

[If you change that 'sex' to 'gender' I'll take it]

Okay, now onto 'The Apartheid of Sex.' What we find here is the muddle-headed - but by now all-too-familiar claim - that erasing sex is liberatory and feminist, because *if there's no sex then no one can be oppressed by sex.* PATRIARCHY, TAKE THAT.

Some policy objectives: 1. Medical/psychological community to 'adopt resolutions' that sex is continuous (CHECK) 2. Prohibit sex classification except for necessary medical purposes (WORKING ON IT) 3. Adopt educational programmes to tell kids sex is self-defined (DOUBLECHECK)

'IMPOSED' SEX AT BIRTH KLAXON. And you, my friend, are in no position to tell me about who has what ass backwards.

Back. The Fuck. Away. From Prince. NOW.

[While we're on that, on Genderquake, Kaitlyn Jenner was all 'Prince and I were good friends' (no you weren't) and 'he was very supportive' (I'm sure he was, did you call him a vagina-fetishist and tell him it was bigotry? I suspect he'd be a little less supportive after that...)

Okay, the end is in sight (HANG IN THERE JONES). Now we lapse into a transhumanist techno-fantasy in which "feminism, technology and transgenderism have debunked the myth of a 'male and female' world' and 'homo sapiens' will gradually be replaced by 'persona creatus.'

Bodies. Vaginas. Who fucking needs them eh?

HUMANNESS IS NOT JUST IN THE MIND YOU PLATONIST DINGBAT. (And minds are not not in bodies either).

So I tried 'thinking of this' and decided a) Your analogies really suck and b) NO THANKS.

I dunno, I think I'd rather send you back to Plato's 'Symposium,' and you can get shit-faced with Socrates and wiffle on about mindware babies and spiritual pregnancy, and then I'll blast you both into space and save us all 2 and a half millennia of this bullshit. DEAL?

"Mind is deeper than matter."

No. It's. Not.

<FIN>

@threader_app Compile please